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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24989674">Ask of the Lesser</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlemagne1/pseuds/Charlemagne1'>Charlemagne1</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Case of Charles Dexter Ward - H. P. Lovecraft, Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Action/Adventure, Anti-ernestphobia, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Crossover, Cthulhu Mythos, Family Drama, Family Feels, Flashbacks, French Revolution, Gen, Literature, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Post-Canon Fix-It, Prequel, References to Frankenstein, References to Lovecraft, Retelling, Sequel, The Necronomicon, Victor Frankenstein deserved better, War, classic literature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:00:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,437</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24989674</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlemagne1/pseuds/Charlemagne1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years after his brother’s death, Ernest Frankenstein finds himself the lone survivor of his family and a refugee after revolutionaries force him to flee Geneva. Left with only Victor’s cursed legacy, an unexpected run-in with Joseph Curwen, one of Victor’s university friends, seems a Godsend when the necromancer claims he too has the ability to raise the dead. Will Ernest’s want for companionship trump his better judgement of meddling with Lovecraftian forces beyond mans' understanding? And does Curwen have ulterior motives for wanting to bring Victor back?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Paradise Lost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Four years after his brother’s death, Ernest Frankenstein finds himself the lone survivor of his family and a refugee after revolutionaries force him to flee Geneva. Left with only Victor’s cursed legacy, an unexpected run-in with Joseph Curwen, one of Victor’s university friends, seems a Godsend when the necromancer claims he too has the ability to raise the dead. Will Ernest’s want for companionship trump his better judgement of meddling with Lovecraftian forces beyond mans' understanding? And does Curwen have ulterior motives for wanting to bring Victor back?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>—The Case of Charles Dexter Ward</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“…did I solicit thee</em>
</p><p>
  <em>From darkness to promote me?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>—Paradise Lost</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Some folks are born destined for greatness. Others live content in ignorant mediocrity, never knowing what could have been. Then there is me. Born into wealth, but barred from inheritance. Raised to be great, but crippled from illness. Dinning amidst kings and counselors, yet ever aware of that unseen barrier separating me from them. Was that not my first memory? My brother halfway out the door, glancing back to remind me I was too little to follow. Too weak. Left behind while he set out to make a name for himself. A name that has haunted me long after fleeing Geneva.</p><p> “But I am alive,” I whispered. Whether it was to my drink or the cockroach circling its rim, I could not say. Usually I could handle the memories, but tonight was the four-year anniversary of my brother’s death, and by God I longed to forget amidst this shabby tavern.</p><p>Taking another swig, I half listened to the men behind my lonely table clank mugs and bet on who was the lowest on Fortuna’s wheel. Their strange accents branded them fellow refugees.</p><p>“The revolutionaries ransacked the whole farm!”     </p><p>“Well, the bloody peasants <em>welcomed</em> Napoleon in my city! I had to flee with only the clothes on my back. You know how the French handled their own revolution. Can you top that, mates?”</p><p>My heart ached for these poor souls. Seeking connection through tragedy, I tipped my chair back to face them.</p><p>“Illness struck my mama down when I was a boy,” I said.</p><p>“Did it?” The grit on the central speaker’s face cracked beneath a mocking smile.</p><p>“Yes, and our trusted family maid strangled my little brother. Shortly afterwards a good friend was murdered abroad, and my dear cousin’s neck was snapped on her wedding night. The pain of it drove my papa to an early grave and my surviving brother insane. The servants thought our family cursed and fled, and I followed suit when the riots escalated.”</p><p>Silence fell over the already solemn tavern. A few men on the sidelines glanced up.</p><p>“I’ll be dammed,” someone called. “We can toast to that! To…”</p><p>“Ernest,” I raised my glass, holding back a cough. “Ernest Frankenstein.”</p><p>The tavern chanted my name with a bitterness only hardened refugees could master. Many of them had likely been noblemen or magistrates, all pointless titles once the fever of revolution had gripped the masses. The upper class had been blamed for every economic and social injustice, and in the fires of vengeance, not even my deceased parent’s philanthropy had saved the Frankenstein villa from rioters.</p><p>From the lakefront I had watched the flames devour my past, present, and foolishly assumed future dwelling. I would compare it to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise, but they at least had one another. What had I? A few hastily gathered heirlooms and happy memories trapped inside coffins? Wretched world! Paradise was lost to me the day Captain Walton presented my last family tie in a casket. He had found Victor half-frozen in the Arctic, chasing imagined monsters he blamed for the misfortune that plagued us. My poor, hysteric brother! I downed the rest of my drink, so much for burying bad memories. As I tried (and failed) to get that miserable captain from my mind, I pulled a few silver francs from my pocket. I would last three months, best. The only heirloom I had not bartered for bread was Victor’s pocket journal, and I doubted the ravings of a madman would fetch a high price. Taking my cane, I started toward the splintering door. A little girl dashed in front of me and I clutched the counter to steady myself. She pranced to the bartender and tugged on his pant leg with tiny hands. The patches on her dress were the same fabric as his pants—his daughter no doubt.</p><p>“My apologies,” the bartender bowed to me while shaking off the girl. “Turn away for an instant and the children wreak havoc!”</p><p>“You are fine,” I nodded. The girl held an empty bowl in her sooty fingers. William had been around her age when Elizabeth and I had first taken him to the lake to catch crawdads. The memory made me smile, and I dropped a few francs on the counter as I passed. “Feed your family.”</p><p>Two months now, but I would manage. A tall gentleman with arms crossed over his half-buttoned coat opened the door for me, and I thanked him before stepping onto the dirt road. The moonlight enveloped the surrounding forest in dancing silver. If I walked all night, I could arrive in the next town by morning, presuming my legs could carry me that far. The sooner Ingolstadt was behind me, the better.</p><p>A multitude of steps thundered after me. Biting my lip, I continued onward.</p><p>“Pardon me, Monsieur <em>Frankenstein</em>.”</p><p>There was venom in those words. I turned to face the group of three, recognizing the badly buttoned coat of the man in front who had held the door. I had not anticipated such a broken-down tavern housing learned readers. It seemed that in times of war even the mighty seek to forget the world.</p><p>“I presume you have read that captain’s so-called biography of my brother?” I interrupted the expected affirmative. “You should know that Victor was <em>aliéné</em>, completely insane.”</p><p>“Graverobbing will do that to a man,” Button Boy’s meaty fingers flexed. “As will lurking around God’s domain doing the devil’s work!”</p><p>The absence of people in the streets was not lost on me. Most people had wisely laughed Walton’s narrative off as a madman’s rambles, but others saw their deepest fears galvanized within Victor’s delusions. Thrusting their terrors of a quickly modernizing world onto who they saw as the ultimate embodiment of progression gone wrong. They had taken fiction for fact, and once they made the connection between him and I, well…</p><p>“Tell me, Ernest, are you aware of the concept of the hereditary taint?”</p><p>“Oh my, I just realized that I have important business elsewhere,” I backed away and thumped against solid muscle. Fingers gripped my boney shoulders as a hoarse voice whispered into my ear.</p><p>“It is the belief that characteristics are passed from parent to offspring.”</p><p>“Interesting. A fine theory to consider while being <em>on my way…</em>”</p><p>Button Boy took a bold step forward. “Characteristics like madness, for example, taint the entire family. It is only a matter of time before they all go the same way.”</p><p>Victor’s journal weighed heavy in my pocket.</p><p>“Good sirs, I fear you are mistaken,” I said, straining my neck to the man restricting me. “I have been an invalid since boyhood. These bones are incapable of mimicking my elder brother. If you hold that biography so dear, you would know that I had no say in his monster’s creation!”</p><p>“Perhaps.”</p><p>The tone was not reassuring.</p><p>“I am not my brother,” I jerked around but the hands easily held me. “Release me! Or I-”</p><p>Button Boy stuffed a rag between my teeth to stifle my pointless threats. What could I have said? That wounding me would have them tried by my high standing dead father and jailed by my dead country? <em>You have nothing, Ernest. You </em>are<em> nothing now!</em></p><p>The exhaustion in my heart made my pitiful thrashing falter. My head fell against my attacker’s solid chest, soaking the shirt with sweat. If this was the climax to nineteen long years of suffering, why had I been born at all? What was your intent, Lord?</p><p>“This is for the good of humanity,” Button Boy leaned in close. Had William also stared into the eyes of his killer? What were his final thoughts as the maid he loved choked the life from his little body? Fingers gripped my throat and I gagged.</p><p>A shout came from somewhere, though my world had shrunk to those two murderous eyes. Out of the night, a fist punched Button Boy’s head with a force that broke his grip. I gurgled a choked gasp and collapsed on the road as the man behind me fled toward the trees. Light and dark wrestled for my vision as shouts and sounds of flesh on flesh erupted nearby. A new man whose blond curls drooped from wet sweat wrestled with Button Boy. Though Button Boy boasted a greater strength, his slim opponent easily dodged his fists and hit back with the skill of a man well-versed in human anatomy. Button Boy leaped up to strike the stranger’s face, but the taller man easily knocked his fist aside and punched his jaw with a force that sent him reeling. Button Boy clutched his mouth as he rushed off, dodging bottles the tavern hurled after him. The blond watched his escape with icy eyes before walking over to me.</p><p>“Is the boy injured?” the bartender called from the doorstep.</p><p>“Slightly stunned, but he will recover. I shall tend to him,” the stranger called back with enough confidence to convince the onlookers to file back inside the tavern. Better to avoid conflict than catch the eye of the wrong people.</p><p>“Can you walk, Monsieur?” the stranger asked with a poorly disguised American accent. He plucked my cane from the ground and handed it to me as I staggered to my feet.</p><p>“I am fine. Thank you, kind sir. Who knows what ditch I would be in now, had you not arrived,” I shuttered, extending my hand that he shook with the upmost class. A peculiar odor clung to him that I had never smelt before.</p><p>“Anything for a Frankenstein.”</p><p>Our hands dropped and I tried to cover a bad tear on my pants. “I take it you knew Papa, in better days.”</p><p><em>Better days.</em> When my parents regularly welcomed renowned scholars to our villa. Justine had kept little William and I occupied while they discussed politics and theory. My throat burned from more than the aftertaste of cheap brandy. Justine. How could we have known what she was capable of?</p><p>“I never had the privilege to meet your father,” the stranger shuffled his shoe in the dirt. The moonlight reflected the fine quality of it. “Though Victor told me he was quite distinguished in your republic.”</p><p>My head lifted. “You knew my brother?”</p><p>“We shared several classes here at Ingolstadt,” the stranger explained. He looked to be in his late 20’s, what Victor would be now, had he lived. “Victor must have mentioned the name Joseph Curwen in passing? I was his chief competition.”</p><p>“I am afraid your name is new to me, Mr. Curwen,” I admitted. “From what I could gather, Victor would forget this place if he could. He guarded his secrets, I fear.”</p><p>“To a fault,” Curwen muttered. “It is a great shame. Your brother was a genius. Truly the Modern Prometheus of this age!”</p><p>“A fitting name,” I muttered. “Eagles feasting on your liver day after day would make even the greatest man go insane.”</p><p>“I heard he passed away, if this is to be believed.” Curwen pulled a book from his satchel. Even in the low light, I recognized Walton’s publication. “A great loss for humanity, to lose a mind as cultivated as his. It is quite the coincidence that I should meet you, Ernest, I was on my way to visit his grave and pay my deepest respects.”</p><p>Poor man! I owed him the truth, horrid though it was. “I am so sorry, Mr. Curwen, but Napoleon runs Geneva now. The Frankenstein tomb could be desecrated for all I know.”</p><p>“But not destroyed. It would be there in some form, correct?” Curwen’s voice fell to a whisper and I shuttered despite the warm breeze. “You would know your native land better than I. Could you take me to your brother?”</p><p>“Suicide,” I stumbled backward. Having just escaped death, I had no intent on testing my luck.</p><p>“I shall make it worth your while,” Curwen returned the book to his satchel and pulled out a piece of strange jewelry. It looked to be a tiara, though the patterns etched on its front held an unearthly splendor unlike any I had seen from Europe. The moonlight sent the golden coat sparkling, though the reflection suggested some foreign alloy.</p><p>“What metal is that?”</p><p>“One that will fetch a fine price,” Curwen winked and tossed me the tiara. I scrambled to catch it in time. “Us merchants have our secrets too.”</p><p>I tipped the headpiece back and forth, ever aware of the loose change rattling in my pocket.</p><p>“Please Ernest, merchantry may be my occupation, but respect for the dead is my <em>duty</em>,” Curwen gave a dramatic bow, perhaps an American attempt at being cordial? The habits of foreigners were largely unknown to me, when they visited our villa, Victor’s company was understandably preferred to mine. Yet hearing this stranger speak of my infamous brother so fondly was a gift in and of itself, and, I reminded myself, he had saved my life.</p><p>“I cannot promise you results, Mr. Curwen, but for the sake of my brother I will assist you as best I can.”</p><p>Curwen shook my hand again, how I missed such kind contact! “It would be much appreciated, Monsieur. We shall embark tomorrow. Until then, you must rest at my residence.”</p><p>“Really?” It was as though I were a human and not an assumed madman’s relative or corrupt aristocrat!</p><p>“For Victor’s brother, it is the least I can do,” Curwen turned from the tavern. “Come now, the university is nearby.”</p><p>“University?” my cane plunked in the dirt. “You cannot mean Ingolstadt University?”</p><p>“Where else?”</p><p>“But they closed earlier this year! From financial troubles, if I recall?”</p><p>“Which makes it the perfect abode to rest in peace,” Curwen chuckled, as though the last bit were humorous. “I assure you it is safe. The few remaining stragglers fled when the French invaded.”</p><p>Break in? Did this man consider me a criminal? Closing my eyes, I reminded myself that I was not much anymore, us invalids had to take what we could. Without Papa’s cushion of wealth, the sooner I accepted that reality the better.</p><p>“Alright, as long as no one will mind.”</p><p>**</p><p>Curwen and I made quick work of sneaking past the dark neighborhoods and French watchposts to the university’s outer gates. The night enveloped the massive buildings within to leave them warped pillars of shadow. I had kept away from this place for good reason. On this very campus those shadows had sprung and consumed my brother, spitting out the shaking husk that arrived home for William’s funeral. Curwen opened the unlocked gates effortlessly. There was no creaking, as though dark forces meant to fool us. The air weighed thick in my lungs.</p><p>“Come along, Ernest. Thankfully, I took the initiative to drag a few sofas into the library for my leisure. You may rest there.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir,” I said. I stayed close to Curwen as he led me by torchlight inside one of the buildings and down several stone corridors that seemed to stretch forever. Finally, he stopped by a warped wooden door that opened to reveal shelves upon shelves of books lining the cobbled walls. Several piles of tossed volumes lay scattered from the hastily abandoned move.</p><p>Curwen chuckled as he stepped inside and began lighting the mounted torches.</p><p>“Does something humor you, Mr. Curwen?”</p><p>“I was thinking of your brother,” he said. “This library would close after dark, but Victor was never the type to grovel at authority. We would alternate between causing distractions so the other could sneak in and study! I presume he roped you into similar mischief, did he not?”</p><p>Curwen stopped by a cluttered desk and quickly placed several of the open books into his satchel. I seized the moment and blotted my runny nose with my coat-sleeve.</p><p>“No, I was Victor’s junior by seven years. I am afraid he never did much with me at all.” I could still see Victor’s sneer as he left for university so soon after Mama’s death. Free from his weak, invalid baby brother. “Did he mention me much?”</p><p>Curwen continued lighting torches with his back to me. “Victor kept his home and work life in private corridors. You likely noticed that in his letters!”</p><p>“He never wrote home,” my shoulders fell. “Not once.”</p><p>“Do not take it personally. Men of Victor’s caliber often find themselves so caught up in their work that the real-world slips by.”</p><p>“What sort of work?” I questioned, watching Curwen place another book in his satchel before buttoning it shut. “Mr. Curwen, surely you do not believe Walton’s lies?”</p><p>Curwen paused, choosing what to say. Victor had done that too. Shifting through information, pulling out the choice details.</p><p>“He worked in the sciences. Victor was a genius, as you know,” Curwen walked out the door with a nod. “Now rest, Ernest. We shall start for Geneva tomorrow.”</p><p>The door shut and I was left alone in the disorganized room. I picked up a badly bent copy of <em>A Vindication on the Rights of Women</em> and returned it to the shelf. Reading had never come easy to me like with Victor. I was still a child when my parents had abandoned their academic aspirations for me and left me to my own devices. A fine thing for a young boy, perhaps that was why I had found Victor’s insistence of making a scholar out of me so tiresome. He had appointed himself as my principal instructor, and not even Elizabeth’s sweet voice pointing out the obvious had swayed him…</p><p>
  <em>“Ernest lacks the constitution for these theorems and formulas, cousin. He ought to strive for a more peaceful occupation, such as a farmer,” she said, almost pleading. </em>
</p><p><em>“Nonsense,” Victor muttered. He pushed another book in front of me, as though my confusion would be overpowered by his desire alone. “He is more than capable of being a lawyer, or a judge like Father. If he would just </em>apply<em> himself!”</em></p><p>
  <em>“Victor,” her voice grew quiet. I still heard her. “You know his mind is incapable of severe application.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Well, I do not care for boring books,” I jumped up and Victor’s handwritten lessons scattered. “Or being a boring farmer! I will be a great soldier, fighting off vicious invaders and going on adventures!”</em>
</p><p>Victor and Elizabeth had shared a look. I did not understand at the time, but even back then they knew my limits. My weak frame could never survive the grueling life of a soldier. The trappings of my flesh outweighed my dream. I abandoned such fantasies soon enough. Probably for the best, there was no longer a Geneva to fight for anyways.</p><p>“But you are sleeping on silk tonight,” I lectured my inner demons while brushing dust from an old sofa. “And fate has been kind enough to gift you a companion! I am no longer alone, there is much to be thankful for tonight.”</p><p>Warmth spread through me as I sunk into the cushions. Curwen <em>needed</em> me, and as the torchlight shadows danced on the ceiling my thoughts left the past to focus on how I might aid the generous American in the future. My mind was at peace, though sleep eluded me as I slipped in and out of consciousness. It must have, for the shapes within those swaying shadows had no place in the waking world! A ball of sprawling tentacles flickered forward and back in some wicked séance while very human shapes danced around it to an unheard beat before crumbling to dust. Those horrible shadow tentacles licked up the dancers’ remains with an eagerness that paralyzed my limbs from silent terror. Then the tentacles leaked down the library walls to consume me just as the knowledge stored here had devoured Victor.</p><p>**</p><p>The next morning, a voice speaking in an unknown tongue shattered the nightmare. Curwen stood over me expectantly, speaking that same foreign language again with raised eyebrows.</p><p>“I take it you do not speak English?”</p><p>“No,” I yawned, rubbing my eyes to hide growing shame.</p><p>“I apologize, your brother was fluent—”</p><p>“I am not my brother,” I curled my trembling fingers around my cane. We could talk after leaving these cursed grounds behind! “But I can take you to him.”</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Of all the characters in Frankenstein, few have been slighted as much as Ernest. He switches from sickly invalid farmer in the 1818 version to aspiring soldier in 1831, but despite losing just as much as Victor, he gets brushed to the sidelines by the end. The aftermath of the insignificant sole survivor of the Frankenstein house is just too good to not explore, and who better encapsulates the insignificance of us lonely humans more than the works of H. P. Lovecraft? Or amplifies it more than the disastrous French Revolution sweeping across Europe around the same time the events of Frankenstein take place? Considering Joseph Curwen spent nine years abroad in Europe studying dark arts, including necromancy and graverobbing, it didn’t seem like much of a stretch to write this crossover.<br/>Scholars typically place the events of Frankenstein’s in the 1790’s, so for this adaptation I have Victor dying in 1798 and Ernest fleeing shortly after when the peasant riots in Geneva were escalating in want of reform. Since Curwen was stated to be killed in 1771, I have bumped up the events of Dexter Ward to overlap with the timeline of Frankenstein. This crossover serves as a prequal to Dexter Ward and sequel to Frankenstein, taking place in 1801, after Ingolstadt closed in the real world amidst financial troubles/French Revolution as well as near the tail end of Curwen’s nine years abroad in Europe, as stated in Dexter Ward.</p><p>Please comment and let me know what you think! ^^</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Nothing Beside Remains</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ernest sneaks Curwen into Geneva to pay his respects to Victor, though Curwen has other plans.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>My frantic flight from Switzerland had taken weeks on foot through the surrounding woodland. The carriage Curwen purchased after leaving Ingolstadt made the journey in a few days. Towns identical in their destruction passed us by as folks picked through the rubble. Geneva likely suffered a similar fate, and my heart ached for the devastated people this bloody revolution was meant to help! Their torches and pitchforks had given great men power and renown, yet what had Napoleon done to benefit them and their broken windows?</p><p>Given my familiar face, Curwen decided to wait until nightfall to visit the cemetery, a decision I did not protest too. Abandoning the carriage, I guided him through the desecrated suburbs of Belrive and welcomed the darkness that hid the extent of the damage done to my former home. Despite my occasional pause for breath, we made good time and the moon had not fully risen when I stopped beside the Frankenstein tomb. In the four years of my absence the wildflowers had taken over, though the stone structure stood as regal as ever. Curwen placed his hat over his heart, content to pay his respects from a distance. I shook the vines from my cane and stumbled to the entrance. My torch lit up the chiseled letters above the sealed door: <em>Frankenstein</em>. My family. Little saplings had sprouted around the tomb, how long until nature reclaimed the only proof my loved ones had existed at all?</p><p>A sudden wildness seized me, and my knees hit the ground as I tore out the surrounding weeds and flung them into the night. Dirt clogged my nails as I desperately tried beating back the woodland that cared so little for memories of warm smiles and charity. The effort tightened my lungs and I collapsed in a panting heap, still surrounded. It took me a moment to realize Curwen had vanished. Wiping sweat from my brow, I staggered to the tomb’s entrance where the door stood ajar. An odd chemical scent floated around melted metal where a lock had been.</p><p>“Are you finished, then?” Curwen’s voice echoed from inside. “Do come in, they do not bite.”</p><p>“What did you do,” I stumbled over to Curwen waiting in the back of the tomb.</p><p>“I told you already. I wish to see your brother,” Curwen said. His pupils drew in the surrounding shadows. “Which casket is his? We do not have time for petty guesswork.”</p><p>His right hand clutched a crowbar. Reality suddenly dawned on me. I was in a hostile land, breaking into the realm of the dead with a stranger who had allegedly known Victor. Previous encounters had taught me that Victor’s rambles attracted two types of readers: those from the tavern who looked on his actions with terror and disgust, and those who did not.</p><p>“You are one of those resurrection men,” I breathed. “A graverobber!”</p><p>Curwen’s face was a mask. “Your brother kept like-minded company.”</p><p>“Victor did no such thing! It was all in his head!” I snarled. “You actually believe he stitched together rotten corpses and reanimated them to massacre my family?”</p><p>“What I believe means little, Victor said so himself,” Curwen carelessly tossed the crowbar on Mama’s casket and pulled Walton’s book from his satchel.</p><p>“You are mad,” I stepped away.</p><p>“Come now, do you really credit your extraordinary misfortune to mere chance?” Curwen pressed. “That those connected to the Frankenstein family just have a habit of getting their necks snapped? That your sweet maid saw it fitting to murder her little charge and hide his locket in so obvious a place? You speak of madness, yet I find your denial of the evidence precisely that!”</p><p>“Nonsense!” My cane struck the floor as though the motion alone could defeat Curwen. “My brother was a genius, yes, but creating life? That is strictly God’s domain!”</p><p>“Foolish boy, you do not get it. He <em>beat</em> God! Earths’ at least, had it been the <em>other gods</em> he chose to rival, well, that is beside the point!” Curwen shook his head. “I thought being his brother would have opened your eyes more so than the others, but you people are all the same. So stuck in your beliefs that you are incapable of comprehending the grand scope of genius! Of the power we hold now and will claim in the future!”</p><p>            The image came again—Victor shaking his head as I begged to come with him. His voice saying I was too weak. A slammed door. No, I did understand. I was not on the level of Curwen, and certainly not Victor. And Curwen’s voice, crazy as his claims were, had an undercurrent of genuineness I could not ignore. Somehow, he spoke the truth. The caskets stacked around me seemed to grow with the revelation. Those at the tavern were right. My older brother was a monster! And the man smiling in front of me was…?</p><p>“I have researched such unhallowed arts as well, and now I too believe I hold the key for such endeavors,” Curwen said. “I can bring him back, Ernest.”</p><p>“Why?” I whimpered. “Has he not done enough?”</p><p>“You must have read Walton’s biography,” Curwen insisted. “That creature was a blank slate turned black from Victor’s neglect. If the resurrected had memory, had a <em>soul</em>, how much greater would they be?”</p><p>“Far worse, if he was a fiend in life!”</p><p>“Your brother was onto something revolutionary,” Curwen continued. His hand lifted toward a future I could not see. “My black magic cannot compare, but I can resurrect his soul. You could have him, and once he relates his secrets to me, <em>everyone</em> you have lost returned.”</p><p>“They are mere skeletons,” I croaked, unsure of anything now. “You cannot reanimate flesh the worms have long since eaten away.”</p><p>“Its essence remains all the same. Decay does not stump me as it did Victor. In many ways, my methods are superior to his, but not permanent. I need him, the same as you. He is your brother.” Curwen held out his hand. It took me a moment to register the gesture.</p><p>“You are right,” I said and grasped his fingers with a smile. “I need him <em>too.</em>” With the last word I yanked Curwen forward and struck his head with my cane—the classic <em>surprise attack</em> mentioned in my old combat books. Turning on my heels, I rushed from the tomb and down the moonlit graveyard. Away from this madman and the truth beneath those caskets! My family murdered by a monster of my brother’s own design! A monster he had said nothing of while Justine hung for his crimes. The poor woman, rotting in a criminal’s grave! I had cursed her legacy while showering the real daemon with misplaced sympathy. My knees gave out and I crashed amidst scattered stone and charred wood. It took me a moment to recognize the great oak that towered over what was once my backyard. I had been so fixated on running away that I had forgotten there was no home to run to anymore. Nothing remained of our villa now, it was rubble and ashes.</p><p>Different ashes flashed through my mind, and I wept. Wept for William, Justine, Elizabeth, Papa, Henry, and any other hapless victim that had stumbled upon Victor’s creation. Wicked world! Why must I be the sole survivor? Why not those with such promise, not an invalid too blind to see the truth? Yet here I crouched, the least worthy left unclaimed by the spoiler. Had the monster found me too insignificant to kill? Did I mean so little to Victor that his vengeful creation had ignored me? My hands pawed at the rubble, as though reality could be brushed away and I could return to better days. The dust brought on another coughing fit I did little to disguise. If I had caught on sooner, if I was not so weak, they would still be alive.</p><p>Weak. I repeated that word to the charred planks and stone until the sun rose. I was powerless, but I knew someone strong. A genius who could peel back the mortal bounds that held me captive. If Curwen brought Victor back…</p><p>
  <em>No, do not think such things. They are not of God!</em>
</p><p>A God who did nothing to stop the slaughter. What did God care for my little life or those of the peasants crushed by this horrid war? Where had he been when Victor’s creature strangled my baby brother or French officials drowned innocent commoners at Nantes? Why were cruel men set up to rule while their supporters lived in shacks? Either God had a preference for the wicked, or he viewed us humans as I would an ant—how we lived and died were beneath him.</p><p>If Curwen brought Victor back, wicked though my brother was, Curwen could force the secret of life from his lips and we could revive those who had been so cruelly slain! I dared to dream, to picture little William chasing grasshoppers in the vineyards again as Elizabeth and Mama (yes, Mama too!) chuckled while we watched him together. It would be sunny with no monsters in that happy home. Victor would be turned away before his delusions of grandeur ruined us again. Yes, yes it would work! Wicked though such work may be, nothing could rival the vile acts that had sealed my family in the tomb to begin with. If that damns me, so be it. I had nothing to lose in the face of failure. I had to find Curwen!</p><p>I arrived at a tomb vacant of life. Victor’s casket stood empty.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The title is a reference to the poem Ozymandias by Percy Shelley, which fits oddly well with Frankenstein’s faulty hubris….<br/>(Feel free to comment with thoughts/suggestions, I'm always looking to improve!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Even Death May Die</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ernest attempts to convince Curwen he is a worthy assistant, and while scouting the French-occupied docks has a much needed confrontation with Walton.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took me weeks to return to Ingolstadt. My past four years of drifting had taken their toll, and the steps I had run on my initial flight I limped over now. Under normal circumstances, I may well have collapsed from exhaustion, but the hope of what waited in Ingolstadt drove me forward. Past men of high standing that threw bricks once they learned my name and kindly peasants who allowed me to share their nothing for the night amongst makeshift roofs. My final francs were given to these kind souls, while Curwen’s tiara was torn from my hands by a group of uprooted city officials. Even as I strained to open the gates of Ingolstadt University, the hatred in those well-dressed thieves’ tones echoed in my ears:</p><p>
  <em>“Your brother unleashed a monster on the world!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“No one cares for your kind! Move along.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“The entire lot of you Frankenstein’s are mad!”</em>
</p><p>Lies. If they had seen gentle William or how Mama tended to Elizabeth when she fell ill, they would know my family had possessed the most admirable traits known to man! Had Victor not tainted our name, they <em>would</em>.</p><p>My clenched fist knocked on the library’s door. I had to swallow my hatred if I hoped to have my family returned.</p><p>“Mr. Curwen?” I called. Silence answered, and yet another unnerving piece of Ingolstadt fell into place. There was an absence of wildlife here. No birdsong or crickets reached my ears. All life seemed to have fled the abandoned grounds and left behind the thick silence that weighed so heavily in my lungs. I thought of Mama’s smile the time I had brought her one of those little moths that fluttered around the villa. The memory rooted me.</p><p>“Mr. Curwen, I see your light in the window. You have my word that this is no trap. I wish to help you!”</p><p>A muffled voice spoke behind the door. “You ran away.”</p><p>“Well, you can hardly expect a sane man to accept your claims so readily without some time for reflection! I have had time, Mr. Curwen, and I believe we want the same thing. I can be your assistant!”</p><p>“You?” hollow laughter echoed behind the door. “Your mind could not stand such unhallowed work. People that delve into the dark arts I excel at must be driven to the brink and happy to leap off the edge into whatever lies beneath the mist of forbidden knowledge.”</p><p>“I cannot talk fancy like that Mr. Curwen, I will not lie,” I admitted. “But surely there is some way I can contribute? Even if it is washing laundry, I can help!” I paused. “Sir, I am his family.”</p><p>“Yet your eyes show nothing but disgust.”</p><p>“Victor is dead to me, but I can separate the creator from the creation,” I said, resting on my cane. “If raising him means getting my family back, I will support you wholeheartedly.”</p><p>The heavy silence lingered, considering. Sliding latches gave me my answer as the door creaked opened. Curwen beckoned me inside with two fingers. For the sake of my family, I would ignore how black his pupils were.</p><p>**</p><p>“Now that you know my true intentions, I can be honest with you, Ernest,” Curwen said while leading me down the stone halls of the university’s main lecture building. My cane <em>clacked</em> with each step. “I am a merchant by trade, though the great forces that lurk beyond man’s understanding have always captivated me. Your brother was not content to live within the limits set by weak minds either. He was always striving to penetrate the veil, reading of Agrippa and Paracelsus.”</p><p>“The alchemists,” I butted in. Victor had spoken of them often at the dinner table.</p><p>“Indeed,” Curwen nodded, and I stood a little taller. “I had the pleasure to introduce him to even greater men such as Borellus and Alhazred! Victor wished to know the secrets of Mother Earth, but my research led me down the path of unseen forces that linger beneath the surface of the physical.”</p><p>“Black magic?” I questioned.</p><p>“Of course. For all our similarities, Victor found power in the physical flesh while I pried life from ungraspable darkness. Here is where my problem lies. Evoking the soul is a simple feat, but restoring the physical flesh for it to inhabit eludes me. My results are warped. <em>Inhuman</em>.” Curwen spat the last word. “Victor could merge both body and soul. While his creation was entirely unique, a little more experimentation could easily lock the souls of the departed into an original frame and make them unstoppable.”</p><p>“So you wish to bring Victor’s soul back and learn how to reanimate flesh?” I asked, trying to keep up. Rain pounded against the roof above us.</p><p>“Precisely.”</p><p>Victor’s pocket journal poked my side. I had read it as the rambles of a madman, but now those diagrams were horribly rational. Be it from shame or fear, I kept the book hidden as Curwen led me into a room of broken stone and makeshift tables crammed with misshapen bottles and bowls. I wanted to read those notes myself before I offered up Victor’s innermost thoughts to this necromancer.</p><p>“Pardon the state of my lab,” Curwen said as he kicked aside broken glass. “The univeristy decimated this room after my departure and I have not gotten around to refurbishing it yet.”</p><p>The stench of smoke and that nameless odor I had smelled on Curwen before clung to the surrounding walls blackened by scorch marks. My head throbbed as Curwen led me past pentagrams and other foul symbols overlapping each other on the floor. Despite our mission to bring about life, all I saw was death.</p><p>“Where is my brother, Mr. Curwen?”</p><p>“Boiled down to the base component of life. I have turned him to salt, and if we succeed, from it I shall return Victor in his entirety.” Curwen paused to study my frown, “The odor will pass with time, it is an undesirable side effect of my process, I fear.”</p><p>His voice sounded reasonable enough, but there was a story to those scorch marks I could not quite read. I wanted to quit this place as soon as I could.</p><p>“Let us finish your process, then,” I glanced around at the surrounding instruments, wondering what came next. “Do we repeat some spooky phrases or do a little dance? I may not look it, but I am quite good at keeping a rhythm!”</p><p>Victor had taught me that. He had made a habit of dragging me from bed night after night to lecture on musical theory and dance in our ballroom. I could never match his skill, but with time I became halfway decent. Victor had never given up on me, he was always saying I could do better, unlike the others who decided I could not dance at all. When I had first showed off my newfound moves, clumsy though they were, he had looked so proud.</p><p>I buried the memory as Curwen flipped through a crinkled book titled <em>Qanoon-e-Izla</em><em>.</em></p><p>“Pace yourself, Ernest. We need the proper supplies before attempting resurrection. That is where you come in, assistant,” Curwen shut the book and the sound echoed off the ancient walls. “I must admit that I never graduated from Ingolstadt. During Victor and I’s second year my work was exposed, and I paid dearly for it. Had Weishaupt still been headmaster, I assure you the Illuminati would have concocted some excuse on my behalf! It is a bloody shame they ran him out too. That is likely why Victor never mentioned me, I was an unsavory character after that.”</p><p>
  <em>You would not be the first person he abandoned!</em>
</p><p>“How did you escape?” I asked, glancing into a large bowl with foreign inscriptions. “Grave robbery is punishable by death, if I recall?”</p><p>“My extensive knowledge of mathematics and traversing fourth dimension enabled my prison escape, though I fear my disappearance has left a high price on my head. Gathering supplies is extraordinarily difficult at present,” Curwen’s high shoulders fell. “You are the only one that can help me, Ernest. A fresh face like yours should not arouse suspicion.”</p><p>Curwen looked so small compared to the blackened walls around us. He <em>needed</em> me! The room and all its foul symbols fell away until the helpless man was all that remained.</p><p>“I will get whatever you need, Mr. Curwen,” I gave a little bounce and banged my head on an overhanging shelf.</p><p>Curwen straightened up instantly and pulled more of that odd jewelry from his satchel. “Excellent. A shipment of supplies is arriving near the docks tonight. Given my circumstances, I initially planned to meet at a later date, but the sooner we begin, the better. My currency should label you a friend. Barter for a wagon with what is leftover, and new clothing, too. The stench clinging to you is revolting.”</p><p>“Is it foul enough to wake the dead?” I chuckled, discreetly brushing dirt from my pantleg. Curwen narrowed his eyes, unamused. For all his gentlemanly gestures, the man clearly had little tolerance for humanity. Even so, I reminded myself why I joined him to begin with. “You are very kind, sir. I will not fail you.”</p><p>**</p><p>Being unfamiliar with the Danube river, I set out in the daylight to scout the docks. The French troops stationed there would likely check all arriving shipments, and I had a nagging feeling that Curwen’s contents were best kept unknown. The earlier rain had slacked off, leaving me to dodge puddles as I passed the few ported ships. How haggard the sailors looked! I could not imagine the strain Napoleon’s sieges had taken on their business.</p><p>Despite the bad though, a cluster of children had taken advantage of the sparsely populated docks to kick around an old bell in some sort of game. Their laughter was contagious, and I smiled while watching the carefree faces that could find such joy in the midst of war. A boy in a tattered coat kicked the bell with a force that sent it skidding through the mud to stop by my cane. The children fell silent as I picked up the toy. Resting on my cane with a friendly grin, my free hand wiped off the mud and extended the bell for the boy to reclaim. He glanced at his comrades.</p><p>“Cripple!” the boy pointed to me and laughed.</p><p>“He wiped his disease all over it,” another sniffed, backing away.</p><p>“Do not let him touch you, or you will limp too!” the boy sprang back, excitedly piecing together this new game. With the bell forgotten, the children rushed away screaming and laughing as they jostled one other. My hand fell to my side as they disappeared behind a shop. I gently set the bell upright on a fence and continued to walk, paying special attention to keep each step steady and consistent. William had never minded my limp, when he was brought back, we would kick bells back and forth all day until Mama made us come inside for dinner.</p><p>Drunken laughter reached me as a group of men staggered my way. I recognized the half-buttoned coat of the man who had attacked me outside the tavern. My head ducked as I hurried down a small alleyway before being noticed. The short jog left me panting and I clutched a wall to steady myself.</p><p>“Are you alright, sir?”</p><p>My muscles stiffened at the familiar voice. Of all the ports in all of Europe, why must <em>he</em> be here?</p><p>“Sir, you are deathly pale?” A gentle hand touched my shoulder and I slapped it away.</p><p>“I assure you that I am quite fine, Walton,” I hissed, turning to meet the captain’s gaze.</p><p>“Ernest?” Walton’s sunken eyes widened. “By god, what are you doing in a place like this?”</p><p>“I should ask you too. Given the popularity of your biography on my brother, I had thought you would be off living a life of luxury?”</p><p>Walton shifted his boney frame on the gravel. Since bringing me the news of Victor’s fate, his formally dark beard had become matted and white. He had lost weight too, I noticed.</p><p>“Believe me, Ernest, if I had known the backlash my book would cause you, I would have never put it to print!” Walton’s head hung. “I only wished to benefit mankind with your brother’s cautionary tale. I did not think—”</p><p>“How your creation of ink would affect his surviving family?” I muttered, eyeing the drunken stragglers down the alleyway. “My family were good people. Victor was the exception, but now the Frankenstein name, the name of my good father, will be forever linked with madness and the highest forms of human depravity!”</p><p>“You have every right to hate me,” Walton closed his eyes. “But do not take that rage out on your brother. I know you believe that Victor was insane, but I saw his creature with my own eyes, Ernest! My printed account lacks the emotion I heard in his tone. He was devastated over what he had done. Of the pain he caused you!”</p><p>I knew that. After Elizabeth was murdered, the withered husk that was once my brother had told me a tale of graverobbing. Of unhallowed texts and a monster lurking in the shadows. Victor had pleaded with me and a bloody <em>magistrate</em> to help him kill the monstrosity. He was so scared. So desperate to confess and beg me for forgiveness.</p><p>Yet I had called him mad. I arranged for Victor to be institutionalized so he could not harm himself in his manic state. Somehow, he caught wind of my plan and disappeared the following morning. He was in a casket when we met again.</p><p>Victor had not related that bit to Walton. His narrative left me to fade into the background. I kept telling myself he skipped my betrayal out of indifference. Yet that night he had sounded so worried for my sake. He had come to me and I turned him away.</p><p>
  <em>If he had spoken the truth from the start, would you have believed him? Or would you have locked away the one person capable of stopping that monster? You would have, right? Victor knew that. He knew the only chance to save you was staying silent.</em>
</p><p>Heat spread throughout my body, whether from shame or rage, I did not know. All I knew was that I refused to let the man who had capitalized on my family’s tragedy upheave my life any further.</p><p>“What does it matter if Victor regretted what he did?” I snapped. “He ought to! He is the reason everyone is dead!”</p><p>“Ernest,” Walton’s tone was pleading. “You are a good man who deserves none of this pain. Staying in Ingolstadt only fuels your bitterness. Come live with my sister and I! You cannot hope to survive in the real world with your impairments.”</p><p>“I am stronger than you realize,” I muttered. Go with Walton? The man who had held a torch to Victor’s sins for all the world to see?</p><p>Who had comforted my dying brother while I was absent. Who did not see me as an extension of Victor and offered an escape from my nomadic life on the run. I eyed the abandoned bell in the distance.</p><p>Once, I might have accepted such an offer and left the bad memories behind me. But why settle for replacements when my true family was just within my grasp? I was with Curwen now, and we would amend Victor’s past mistakes instead of moving forward with our lives. I shook my head and Walton’s hand lowered. He seemed to view me for the first time.</p><p>“Ernest,” Walton’s tone shook. “Why are you in Ingolstadt when you know full well what Victor did here?”</p><p>I shrank away. Walton had seen what Victor had been reduced to. He would never condone a repeat of his work, no matter the good intentions.</p><p>“It was nice meeting you, captain,” I started down the alleyway, faking confidence. “But I must be going. Seeing how little you considered me when you published Victor’s account, you have no right to take an interest now.”</p><p>That struck a nerve. Walton was too good. Too kind. He did not deserve to be caught up in this mess. It was cruel of me to weaponize his mistake when he had only meant well. I saw his head lower and knew my words bound him in place. Guilt pricked me as I rushed away, but it was a small price for what Curwen had promised.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Regarding the Illuminati, Adam Weishaupt founded it at Ingolstadt University in 1776, and considering pop culture associates them with the new world order (you know, that thing Curwen’s kinda trying to bring about), I had to give them a place in the narrative. Frankenstein is Illuminati confirmed and you shall not question this head cannon.<br/>And mathematical teleportation? Hmmmmmmmmm, where have we seen that before?</p><p>(Feel free to comment with thoughts/suggestions, I'm always looking to improve!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Shadow Over Ingolstadt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ernest picks up Curwen's mysterious cargo and is led into a secret underground crypt beneath Ingolstadt where he is confronted by an all-to-familiar image as well as a revelation regarding Victor.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The churning river was an inky black beneath the moonless night. I met the man Curwen had described standing beside a small sloop in a narrowed channel hidden from the main docks by a stretch of pines. His hat was pulled over his face as he directed the handful of crew members to load the cargo into my newly purchased wagon.</p><p>“Thank you, sir,” I extended my hand to the fine fellow. “I cannot express how much these contents will benefit me!”</p><p>The man let out a scratchy laugh as he rubbed the strange necklace Curwen had given me for payment with calloused fingers. He stank of peat and dead fish.</p><p>“You swim in deep waters, boy. Do you know the contents of this cargo?”</p><p>“Dark magic trinkets. Vials and weird mushrooms, I would imagine?” That was what Victor had worked with.</p><p>The man laughed again, shaking his head. Feeling my incompetence, I set my cane against a tree and limped over to grab a crate not yet loaded on my wagon. The weight made me stagger as liquid sloshed back and forth inside.</p><p>“Careful scamp,” the captain called. “That is the finest chemical France has to offer! Only thing those hounds are good for.”</p><p>“I know,” I puffed, though my feet stumbled and the crate smashed against the rocks. A passing sailor snatched it up with a chuckle as the group roared with laughter. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the gashes the rocks had torn in my new pants. I felt the same heat in my cheeks that arose whenever the kids in Geneva had mocked me for being unable to keep up with their games. The jeers evolved in both their frequency and intensity until I had stopped coming outside altogether. Victor had been the one to convince me to rejoin society. He had taken my hand and led me past the laughing faces at the market to buy me a wooden sword for my aspiring career as a soldier. Victor cared little for the opinions of anyone outside our home and took no issue with hurling rocks at my tormentors until they left me alone and I was a happy child once more. Elizabeth had once said that my parent’s extensive travels across Europe when he was a boy had deterred Victor from forming any real connections outside our little circle. Family, he once told me while bouncing tiny William on his leg, were the only permanent forms of fellowship one could count on.</p><p>Yet he had ruined ours.</p><p>When the laughing crew had finished loading my wagon, I left their mocking behind and led my new horse down the winding backroads. Cannonballs lodged into trees reflected us as we passed. It seemed revolution had penetrated even the depths of nature. My horse clopped along the overgrown paths without complaint until we neared the gates of Ingolstadt University.</p><p>“Come on,” I encouraged, lightly tapping him with my cane. The horse bolted up with a sharp bray that echoed through the forest, nearly knocking me from the wagon as I fought for control with the bucking beast. I would never reach Curwen at this rate! If I could not do the most basic of tasks, what sort of assistant was I? Justine’s face flickered in my mind, her hands shooing me away.</p><p>
  <em>“Do not trouble yourself, young master. I can sweep up this broken vase just fine by myself.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“But I can help!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Not with those lungs. You must take it easy.”</em>
</p><p>“Life is not easy,” I muttered and yanked the reigns sharply toward the gateway. The horse reared up again and flung me from the wagon to the forest floor. I rolled over just as a hoof smashed down where my head had been. From the ground, I saw Curwen’s feet rushing over, a wooden plank swinging from his hand.</p><p>“Down you beast, down!” he screeched and whacked the horse between the eyes. The horse struck out his hoof, but Curwen dodged and smashed the plank into the horse’s head again. The creature staggered backward, and the wagon creaked beside me. I jumped up and steadied it as Curwen pulled a glass vial from his pocket and shoved it beneath the horse’s nose. The horse let out a smaller neigh and shook its head with less force than before. Curwen grabbed his chin and pressed the horse’s face to his. “You <em>will</em> obey me, bloody brute!”</p><p>Curwen’s usually calm face contorted as he struck the creature again, though the horse had given up long ago.</p><p>“Mr. Curwen, that is enough,” I pleaded. The poor animal was swaying!</p><p>Curwen’s eyes locked on me, and I felt myself falling into the pits of his eyes. Shaking my head, I hobbled between him and the horse and rested my hand against the creature’s sweat-slick neck. There was something about the beast’s helplessness that pained me.</p><p>“I shall lead him the rest of the way,” I said. “He is calmer now.”</p><p>Curwen’s face flushed with returning color. “A fine idea. I shall show you where to leave our supplies,” he smiled at me, a gentleman once more. “You did well, Ernest. I would have never reached the docks on my own.”</p><p>My momentary unease withered beneath Curwen’s praise. Fetching his materials was dangerous, but I had succeeded! See Justine, I <em>can</em> do more than watch from the sidelines!</p><p>I guided the dazed horse along gently as Curwen led us to the old lecture building where he had set up his makeshift lab. After I tied the steed to a nearby tree, Curwen loaded a good portion of the crates and odd vases onto a smaller wagon and motioned for me to follow him. I instinctively turned down the hall where his lab was, but Curwen pointed to a stairway I had not noticed before. The scorch marks around the opening were not reassuring.</p><p>“These materials must be stored deep underground, where it is cool.” Curwen gave a formal bow. “After you.”</p><p>“Me?” I squeaked. That unnamable smell from the lab was practically rolling from the crypt.</p><p>“Who else can hold the torch?” Curwen’s teeth flashed. “Unless you can push this cart yourself?”</p><p>Feeling my uselessness, I snatched a torch from the wall and descended the steps. Curwen followed behind with the wagon, each step sending the mysterious liquid sloshing around within the crates. Unlike the plain cobbled stone utilized aboveground, the stairway and walls were smoothed down and decorated with chiseled images that boasted a technique aesthetically evolved to the highest degree.</p><p>“Weishaupt had these catacombs constructed during his time as headmaster,” Curwen’s voice echoed unnaturally. These walls absorbed sound too. “Officials sealed the crypt off after running him out, long before our time. Victor and I used to speculate on what secrets the Illuminati hid here beneath the world of man. I only recently cleared the stonework to enter myself.”</p><p>“It must have taken years to chisel the artwork alone,” I breathed. The dancing shadows made the artwork look alive.</p><p>“Legend says Weishaupt’s crew finished in three months.”</p><p>“That is impossible!”</p><p>“Not if the workers were more than human,” Curwen smiled as he passed an image of a star-shaped plant creature in that utterly alien style. “Consider this an honor. Besides us, no mortal has trod this sacred ground for decades!”</p><p>A screech sounded ahead of us.</p><p>“See, in our absence the rats rule this world!”</p><p>“That was no rat,” I breathed, halting on my step. “That was a bark. No, a dog imitating a human scream!”</p><p>“Do you hear how ridiculous you sound,” Curwen laughed, and I fell silent, ever aware of how feeble my lone torch was compared to the surrounding darkness.</p><p>At the end of the stairway, Curwen began lighting the mounted torches that slowly revealed a massive circular room with honeycomb corridors splitting off in multiple directions. My eyes broke from the cryptic symbols etched above each entrance to the image chiseled into the stone floor. Nearly the entire floorspace was dedicated to the horribly realistic etching of a creature with curling swaths of tentacles dotted with glowing orbs of yellow eyes. So many eyes! Such a dreadful yellow!</p><p>“That creature,” I whispered. “I saw it in my dream!”</p><p>“Your deep grief must be manifesting into literal monsters,” Curwen frowned. “It will pass once your family is returned.”</p><p>“No, this is identical to the monster in my dreamscape! How can that be, when I have never seen it before?” I shivered from more than the crypt’s biting cold. The surrounding carvings radiated the same unearthly quality as Curwen’s mysterious merchant jewelry. Sunlight had never touched this place, and neither should creatures that belonged in its light like us.</p><p>“Calm yourself, Ernest,” Curwen patted my back. “Perhaps the lack of air is too trying for your weak lungs?” He raised two fingers to stop my reply. “These vases of salt are small enough for even you to handle. Bring them to the room on the left. I shall carry the crates to their own resting place.”</p><p>I started to protest, but the eyes chiseled into that life-like stonework seemed to be watching me. Studying. I did not wish to linger here any longer than necessary.</p><p>The salt in the vases rattled as I entered the stone room of furnaces half-hidden by dust and white ash. My arm cleared charred wood chips from a furnace to place the vases. I noticed the corner of something white peeking from beneath the stone structure. Pulling out the paper and brushing off the dust, I stared at a letter with the wax seal still intact. I held the paper to my torch with trembling hands, but my poor literacy skills were not deceiving me, the wax emblem was imprinted with the distinct Frankenstein seal! I broke the wax and the aged paper crinkled in protest as I read the contents dated nearly nine years ago:</p><p>
  <em>Dearest Family,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope this letter finds you in good health, assuming it finds you at all. I have yet to receive any communications from your end, though I am told such delays are common here at Ingolstadt. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Rest assured though, that I am not alone. Fate has been kind to bless me with a fellow kindred spirit! Though he too is a first year, Mr. Curwen has shown me much to compensate for my late start due to Mother’s abrupt passing.</em>
</p><p>The next lines had a thicker consistency of ink, as though the author had taken a long break after recounting this death.</p><p><em>Curwen is a true friend. He eagerly shares my enthusiasm for Agrippa and</em> <em>Paracelsus and has introduced me to the writings of Borellus and other great men M. Krempe relentlessly mocks in his lectures. Do not fret Father, for I assure you that these genius writings receive little more than chuckles from my peers. My research does not involve the forbidden texts you have warned me of, and certainly not that horrid </em>Necronomicon<em>, contrary to Curwen’s attempts to convince me of its worth. </em></p><p>
  <em>In other news, I have made terrific progress on my theory of galvanism, which my next letter shall humor you with in greater detail, for I fear I have bored you enough. Give little William many kisses for me, and do write soon! Curwen is a fine companion, but he is steadfast in his ambition and does not understand me as you all do.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Postscript: I found this particularly vibrant leaf native to Germany that I am confident Ernest will enjoy, nature fanatic that he is. I entrust you will deliver it to him safely. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Best,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Victor Frankenstein </em>
</p><p>My finger traced the imprint of the long-since decayed leaf on the paper. Victor <em>had</em> written! Frequently too, if this letter was to be believed, and these were not the rambles of a madman. Rather, they were the sincere concerns of a brother. <em>My</em> brother, who had taught me to catch moths without damaging the wings so I could show Mama. Who Curwen said had never walked these formerly boarded halls.</p><p>“Ernest, are you in here?”</p><p>“Yes, Mr. Curwen,” I said, stuffing the letter in my coat and turning to the figure in the doorway.</p><p>“Good. A man can become lost down here if he wanders. When you have finished unloading, come up to the dining hall.” Curwen’s voice lightened. “The revolutionaries did a poor job raiding the pantry!”</p><p>“I will, sir,” I nodded, and waited for his shadow to pass. As Curwen’s footsteps faded, I dropped the letter and watched it float back beneath the furnace, perfectly hidden from the surrounding ashes. My stomach lurched from more than hunger as I snatched it back up. We had heard nothing from Victor for years until Henry found him. Had someone <em>burned</em> Victor’s letters, and I held the sole survivor? If so, why had Victor kept silent when we confronted him on his lack of communication and told Walton he had neglected to write at all? Why hide proof that he cared? Dead or alive, Victor’s secrets seemed intent to haunt me.</p><p>The weak neighs of my horse reached me long before climbing back into the world of men. Whatever Curwen had given him had worn off, and his sides heaved as he tugged against the rope. My fingers made quick work of untying the knot. The motion rejuvenated the horse, and he rushed off into the waning night to leave all this mystery behind. I would tell Curwen the animal had overpowered me. No one deserved to be trapped here, and if they were, it should be their choice to make.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So Victor DID write, and the descriptions of those odd drawings sound familiar…</p><p>(Feel free to comment with thoughts/suggestions, I'm always looking to improve!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. What the Moon Brings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ernest's routine trip to the docks for Curwen's supplies takes an unexpected turn.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What exactly is that?”</p><p>“A dress for Mama! She will need clothes when we revive her, Mr. Curwen,” I chirped, caressing the white silk. “Mama looked so beautiful in the dresses she used to wear. When I was a boy, she would always take William and I’s hands and race up the hills near our villa to watch the sun rise over the mountains. You should have seen her! When we went after a rain shower, the droplets on Mama’s dress would sparkle in the rising light! She was such an angel,” I wiped away fond tears. “William always tried capturing those shining droplets in his little hands, his expression was so precious when the liquid ran down his fingers instead! I cannot wait to relive those happy times. See here,” I hopped over to my assortment of dresses and toys and snatched up a carved spinning top to show Curwen. “I have been spending some of the allowance you give me on little trinkets I know will make them smile!”</p><p>Curwen moved aside a carved ducky with his shoe, unimpressed. “Pace yourself. We must resurrect Victor before we can even consider the rest of your family.”</p><p>“I know,” I sighed, returning the spinning top to the couch that doubled as my bed. Curwen had drug it and other abandoned furniture into a cleared corner of the kitchen for my sleeping quarters. I had hoped the move would cure the nightmares that plagued me in the library, but the devouring mass of tentacles and eyes followed me wherever I rested my head. Traumatizing though the visions were, I internalized my horrific dreams to save Curwen the trouble of mocking my senseless agitation. He was going to such great lengths for my sake and I dared not inconvenience him with petty complaints.</p><p>“I have also made you dinner,” I smiled, pointing to the readied fish platter on the table beside a smaller plate containing my own. “I spent the entirety of my allowance this week on some rare spices for us!”</p><p>“We agreed that you would leave all food outside my lab, nowhere else,” Curwen’s voice dripped with disapproval and my eyes fell back on the dress. “Do you honestly believe I have the time to waste eating out here with lesser minds such as yours?”</p><p>“Of course not, sir! But surely you cannot usurp the laws of nature on an empty stomach?” I pleaded. Try as I might to prove myself, so set was Curwen’s sights on high aspirations that he never glanced down to consider fellowship with little men like me. “Sir, you always eat alone in your lab, and since you are too busy for evening walks together, I thought this would be the best way to show my appreciation for everything you do for me…”</p><p>“That can be achieved by picking up my equipment from the docks every fortnight and minding my personal space,” Curwen muttered, though he placed his coat over the chair and settled down. I scampered over to the seat across from him as Curwen took his first bite and grimaced.</p><p>“This is far too plain, Ernest. You cannot expect me to finish.”</p><p>I slid the readied jar of salt his way. Curwen groaned and sprinkled it sparingly.</p><p>“You have your brother’s determination,” he shook his head with the first smile I had seen in weeks. “Nothing deterred Victor once his mind was set—for better or worse.”</p><p>My finger’s tightened around Mama’s dress at Victor’s mentioning, though I dared not speak out and ruin the first conversation I had had with Curwen, or anyone, in days. The gesture was not lost on my host.</p><p>“You should not hate him, Ernest.”</p><p>“You expect me to forgive that man?” I folded the white dress. It was the color of good, not like my brother. How beautiful Mama had appeared when the morning light lit her smiling face! “Those bright souls are extinguished because Victor could not let the dead lie!”</p><p>“Just as you are doing now?”</p><p>Ingolstadt’s unnatural silence filled the room.</p><p>“No. I am undoing his destruction,” I corrected.</p><p>“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Curwen’s white teeth flashed in the torchlight.</p><p>“Unless said wrong is for the greater good,” I retorted. <em>The greater good.</em> That was what I told myself the noises from Curwen’s locked laboratory that woke me in the dead of night were.</p><p>“Your brother said the same,” Curwen said.</p><p>“I thought you said he kept his life private?” I challenged, though Curwen’s glare silenced me, reminding me how much I owed this man.</p><p>“I did,” Curwen frowned. “But with time, it is easy to see into the hearts of the company you keep. Victor arrived at Ingolstadt broken enough to seek out the unorthodox. Your mother’s death crushed him. He cared deeply for those he left in Geneva.”</p><p>“Not enough to write,” my default complaint faltered on my tongue.</p><p>“You can hardly blame one for being swept up in their work,” Curwen idly brushed some blueish powder off his shirt.</p><p>“Do you ever write to your family in America?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation into calmer waters.</p><p>“Having moved among far more potent entities, what use have I for the likes of them?” Curwen laughed sardonically. “Why go back on nearly nine years of blissful silence?”</p><p>“Nine years?” I gagged.</p><p>“Salem is trapped between woodlands and ocean, there is little opportunity for fine education in America,” Curwen sniffed, banging his fist on the table. “Europe is far richer in its secrets. Secrets my weak-minded kin lack the constitution to grasp.”</p><p>“Indeed,” I said slowly, thinking of that lonely letter. Someone had wanted to block Victor from reaching out to us. Someone who cared little for family relations. “It is dusk. I should start for the docks if I hope to receive the next shipment.”</p><p>**</p><p>My second horse resided in an abandoned barn a great distance from the frightening presence of the university. Curwen had made a habit of seeing me off and waiting for my return to help pull the wagon the rest of the way. Tonight was no different, and I settled into my routine as I rode to the secluded waterfront where the old captain waited with his hat hiding his eyes. Neither he nor the sailors mocked me as I paid up, a change I was to grateful to question until the masks were flung aside and a dozen muskets forced me to the ground. The ‘captain’ stepped into the torchlight, boasting a far more menacing figure than the shriveled man I had grown accustomed too. Beneath the familiar coat stretched over wide shoulders, I glimpsed a shirt buttoned unevenly. It was Button Boy from the tavern, and he had acquired several new friends.</p><p>“Beautiful night for a stroll, eh Monsieur Frankenstein?” he sneered.</p><p>“It <em>was</em>. The pitchforks and muskets ruined the mood, I fear,” I muttered as two men held me down in the dirt.</p><p>“Tell me, Ernest, what business do you have wandering out after dark? Your clattering wagon could <em>wake the dead.</em>” Not expecting a response, Button Boy turned to another ‘sailor’ with glasses halfway down his crooked nose. “See your honor, I told you we could mimic those outlaws and he would be too foolish to know the difference!”</p><p>
  <em>I was just happy they were not laughing at me!</em>
</p><p>“Where is the captain?” I croaked, looking around the silent bank.</p><p>“Where all the killers go,” Button Boy traced an imaginary line across his throat.</p><p>“Killers?”</p><p>“Feinting ignorance will not save you,” Button Boy snarled. The captain’s coat slumped to the ground as he knelt beside me. “Everyone in Ingolstadt knows what you Frankenstein’s are about,” his palm opened to show the jewelry I had paid him earlier. “You conspire with the Deep Ones for earthly riches! Unhallowed servant of Satan, you will bring the devil’s work to our city no more!” He called to a man beside my wagon, “Split the crate! Show him how much we know.”</p><p>The man threw one of my crates to the ground and a group of three smashed the wood with the ends of their muskets. I held back a cry at the splintering wood, for each crack widened the gap in my heart that whispered I would never see Mama or any of my family ever again. My agony turned to confusion as what rested in the crate was not mushrooms at all, but more sealed vases. An angry kick shattered one and a dark red spilled out. After years of walking through former battlefields, I recognized the familiar scent of blood!</p><p>The captain’s remark floated to the surface of my skull and popped with a ferocity that rattled me—<em>that is the finest chemical France has to offer! Only thing those hounds are good for.</em></p><p>“Paying outlaws to gather your wicked supplies?” Button Boy hissed. His face was redder than the blood spreading toward us. “Who were they? Fleeing refugees no one would miss? I doubt the specifics would keep a monster like you from sleeping at night. Rest assured; we will make this the last night you live.”</p><p>“Lock him up,” the man beside Button Boy tinkered with his thick glasses. “We have the evidence to execute him on the morrow.”</p><p>Button Boy nodded. “We will make an example of you, Frankenstein. Of what happens to those who play god.”</p><p>“You are mistaken,” I protested. My head throbbed from illness and shock as I fought to act on these dreadful revelations. “I would never stand for such heinous dealings!”</p><p>
  <em>But Curwen?</em>
</p><p>The surrounding faces were contorted in a mixture of terror and rage. Not even Button Boy had a trace of trickery in those blue eyes. These men were homesteaders protecting their loved ones from villains. Villains like me, I realized with a shudder, as the spreading blood left its sickly trail of red on the stones. Even as they led me away, I knew I had to remain their only target. Maybe it was from shock or disbelief, but I could not expose Curwen to these men. His success was wrapped up with my family, and amidst all the lies and chaos, the image of Mama holding me in her white dress was all I had to cling too.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Now that we're here, did my Dexter Ward fans catch on that the mysterious liquid was human blood all along?</p><p>(Feel free to comment with thoughts/suggestions, I'm always looking to improve!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Gods and Monsters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>While awaiting his execution, Ernest thinks back to when Victor first warned him about his creature.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Darkness enveloped my little cell as I waited for my last sunrise. A cruel ending it was, to be hung in the square and have the name Frankenstein permanently branded with unhallowed deeds. The shadow of Victor’s legacy would trap me till the end, and I had only myself to blame. My selfish desires to revive my family had blinded me to Curwen’s dark work. A mistake I realized had likely cost many lives, judging from the number of crates I had delivered over the past few months. Human blood! Oh, if only I had known! How could I hate Victor when in my own obsession I had enabled such atrocities? What right had I to judge him when I was enslaved to the same master?</p><p>My head thumped against the wall in defeat. Victor. My mind drifted back to our final conversation in the villa, when we were all that remained of our family and a trembling husk was all that remained of him.</p><p>“That daemon has struck down everyone but you, and he is coming, Ernest! I have failed to stop him, and he shall claim you too, if you stand idle!”</p><p>“Calm yourself, Victor. You are unwell,” I soothed, watching him pace the floor. “Elizabeth’s death has shaken you.”</p><p>“Murder. She was <em>murdered</em> by him, Ernest! You must believe me!” Victor clutched my shoulders with boney fingers. He shoved his journal against my chest, and I saw his nails were gnawed to bloodied stubs. “Here is my journal, dated years ago! Could madness be so precise? So detail-oriented?”</p><p>Grief had settled into every line of his exhausted face. His manic eyes pleaded with me through the strands of unkempt hair that floated rather than fell around his head. I ignored the lice crawling in the knotted curls and gently shut the journal.</p><p>“Victor, you know I stumble with such fancy words. These are scribbles to me.” I patted his trembling hand. “How about we get some sleep, huh? The servants are pouring some Laudanum to calm your nerves.”</p><p>“I do not need calm, we must act,” Victor’s voice rose to the rafters in desperation. My hand discreetly waved forward the servants positioned in the hall. “I have wrought terrible mayhem upon our house, but I will not let my curse consume you too! You are all I have left, Ernest. I beg of you to believe me! Not these mad claims, but <em>me</em>. As my brother, you must heed this threat!”</p><p>“Yes, yes, Victor,” I smiled gently and fought back tears. Elizabeth and Papas’ deaths had broken him. My poor, hysteric brother! He had always been the strong one. The one with all the talent pushing my miserable frame to be better. Where had that trailblazer gone? My brother may have been clutching me, but he had abandoned me in spirit. The Victor I had known was gone. The servants filed in to take his imposter away.</p><p>“Do not let them do this, Ernest,” Victor fought the hands that restrained him, though he had lost the strength to fight long ago. “Please, believe me! I cannot lose you too!”</p><p>“You are mad with grief, Victor,” I soothed. “Rest will restore you.”</p><p>
  <em>You are the strong one! How can you fall apart and leave me alone?</em>
</p><p>Victor opened his mouth, but my mind was set. Something like defeat settled in his eyes. Victor’s body went limp as the servants’ drug him to his room. His eyes never left me, two watery pits silently pleading to be heard.</p><p>Wanting to save a thick-skulled wretch like me.</p><p>My hands pressed against my eyes and I wept for words left unspoken. He <em>had</em> cared! Victor had done wrong by turning from God, but I had turned my back on my own brother who so desperately wanted to keep me safe.</p><p>Was that why his creature had spared me? Not because I was to insignificant for my death to hurt Victor, but because me living and reducing his suffering to the rambles of a madman was the ultimate punishment? Victor could find strength in those murdered by destroying his monster and avenging them. The misery I had to live with in their absence would not end by Victor putting a bullet through the creature’s heart. My murdered family’s thoughts were at peace, but my ongoing misery was Victor’s shame to carry to the grave knowing he was responsible. His fond letter crinkled in my pocket, and I knew I could not hate him. I knew then too, that the unhallowed work that had withered his spirit and decimated our family could not continue, no matter the intent.  </p><p>The prison door swung open and a streak of light cut back the shadows. I covered my eyes from the haggard silhouette outlined against the intense brightness.</p><p>“Ernest, what in heavens name are you doing here?”</p><p>“Walton?” Blinking rapidly, I focused on the captain’s battered frame. “Have you come to take me to the gallows?”</p><p>Silence settled between us.</p><p>“I want to know why?”</p><p>“Why an invalid like me would play with a fire that scorched my brother?” I laughed bitterly. “I thought I could resurrect my family and we could be happy again, but not if their life comes from the death of others. I have seen death, Walton, and felt the void created in its wake. I would never subject anyone to that grief, even if it meant restoring my only source of happiness. I know what such work did to Victor and saw how it tore our family apart. I was a fool to think any good could come of its continuation.” I turned from the captain. “So write your sequel. Tell the world what a fool I am!”</p><p>“You are a fool,” Walton nodded. He bent beside me and rested his hand across mine. “But you are not a bad man. You clearly did not know the contents of your wicked cargo. It seems your destiny to be caught up in the madness of others, a lonely ship tossed about in a storm it could never hope to understand. You know better now, though.” Walton’s voice cracked. “Tell me who tricked you? What are they planning with Victor’s work?”</p><p>My repressed misgivings of Curwen resonated with Walton’s trembling voice. I had been too focused on my family to consider how Curwen would utilize the spark of life after they were brought back. What had he meant about merging raised souls with new flesh to be unstoppable?</p><p>“I do not know the details, but if the end justifies the mean, and that mean is human blood, it is a wicked thing,” I frowned. “Is this an interrogation?”</p><p>“A rescue,” Walton corrected, stepping aside to give me a clear path to the door. Seeing the confusion on my face, he pulled out an empty sack and smiled. “Your father was a magistrate. You should know how a few gold coins can sway a verdict. Yet not everyone has deep pockets, if you want the night on our side, we must quit this place and put an end to whatever is brewing on the edges of Ingolstadt.”</p><p>Gripping the wall, I pulled myself to a standing position, longing for my cane left by the river. “I will do whatever I can to stop Mr. Curwen from following in my brother’s steps.”</p><p>“<em>We</em> will stop,” Walton placed a hand on my shoulder.</p><p>“Captain, this is my sin to mend,” I said. “You must not jeopardize your life to let mine be at peace.”</p><p>“I fear all life will be in jeopardy if I stand idle,” Walton frowned. “I am more than just the historian of great men’s exploits, and you are not your brother. You do not have to do this alone.”</p><p>A roach darted in and out of the shaft of floor light. What chance had I of talking down Curwen alone? Walton knew the thrill of discovery, he could speak a language to Curwen that I had never known and Victor knew all too well. And, despite the pain Walton’s biography had caused me, I realized that Victor’s legacy overshadowed us both, but while I was tied to Victor by blood, Walton merely happened upon him by chance and was unknowingly thrust into this world of gods and monsters. I was shunned for the deeds of my brother, but as I looked at the frail captain, I knew he had suffered too. My hostility was unwarranted, and I extended my hand to relate as much to Walton.</p><p>“Shall we destroy that feind, then?” Walton asked, eagerly returning the handshake.</p><p>I thought of the morning after the servants had drug Victor away. I had stood in his empty room torn apart by a hasty deserter rushing to an Arctic death.</p><p>I shook my head beside Walton. I had ignored Victor for the last time.</p><p>“Walton, my brother held this man to the highest regard. I will not underplay the depravity of Mr. Curwen’s work, but perhaps his delusions of grandeur have incapacitated his ability to reason, a crime which I cannot judge, nor you, Arctic explorer. When we enter the university, let me speak with him before any rash action is taken.”</p><p>“And if speech fails?”</p><p>“You know what Mr. Curwen will do, and that cannot be.”</p><p>Walton looked reluctant, but having nearly died in his own quest for glory, he could not protest.</p><p>Outside, we were met by a horrid wind that sent overturned barrels bouncing across the streets. Walton found me a broom to replace my cane as we hurried past window shutters slamming open and shut. It seemed nature itself was sick of this wicked business.</p><p>“Does this Curwen character work with human flesh?” Walton shouted above the wind as we cleared the courtyard.</p><p>“Initially, though his process for reanimation differs greatly from Victors. He boils the body down to salt and relies on black magic for completion.”</p><p>Walton nodded with a frown. “By any chance, did you ever inspect Victor’s casket after I delivered him to you?”</p><p>“There was no reason to after I saw his face,” I said, confused by this question. A chorus of barks and howls rose up throughout the city. Were they following us?</p><p>“I see,” Walton said, eyes darting around in search of bloodhounds. “Given your former disbelief of Victor’s accomplishment, I refrained from sharing certain requests he relayed to me. Requests I felt best to omit from my biography.”</p><p>“Do tell?” I said as a man leaned out his window to wrangle the collar of his howling dog in a vain attempt to silence it.</p><p> “Victor said he did not wish to be brought back and asked for me to dismember and discard him after death,” Walton admitted, side stepping a bouncing barrel. “An odd request, considering he alone knew the secret of reanimation. Or so I thought.”</p><p>“Right,” I said absently. The unnamable smell from Curwen’s lab hung heavy in the air. “Did you do it?”</p><p>“I could only bring myself to throw his left hand overboard, I am no butcherer!” Walton shivered from more than the wind. “I did not know if that means anything to you now?”</p><p>“It appears straightforward enough,” I breathed as the gates of Ingolstadt University came into view. “Victor cannot be revived.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>While writing this I wanted to explore WHY the creature would have spared Ernest? Some might consider his survival a plot hole, but considering no one believed Victor when he went to the magistrate in the novel, it makes sense that sparing Ernest would give Victor an entirely new source of misery through his own brother thinking him mad. And of course, this chapter's title alludes to Pretorius's famous line in The Bride of Frankenstein, because I had to reference the films at least ONCE, XD! </p><p> </p><p>(Feel free to comment with thoughts/suggestions, I'm always looking to improve!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. The Horror from the Shadows</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ernest confronts Curwen over his true intentions, and pays the price</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Ernest, you are late! Wonderful news, the conditions needed for us to press forward have miraculously aligned! We shall revive your brother tonight, just before the sun rises on the horizon!”</p><p>“Mr. Curwen, we need to talk.”</p><p>Curwen barely glanced up from the candle he was lighting. He did not seem surprised by my tone as he rushed around the strange symbols newly chiseled into the scorched floor. Many of the large bowls and vases I had purchased on his behalf lined the walls. The crates of blood were nowhere to be found.</p><p>“Idle chitchat can wait, Ernest. Tonight, we become gods!”</p><p>The power churning beneath his tone nearly swept me into submission, but I stood my ground. I had failed Victor, but I would save his friend.</p><p>“Mr. Curwen,” I started, pausing to steady my trembling broom-turned-cane. “I saw the contents of your cargo tonight, and so I must dissuade you from reviving my brother.”</p><p>“Your disgust is justified, I will not try and moralize my work,” Curwen said with smooth rehearsal. “But this is how discoveries are made. Dirtied hands now shall benefit mankind for generations! Your brother knew good could come from even the vilest of research.” Curwen shut the book he had been flipping through. The already torn cover peeled down to reveal a title beneath <em>Qanoon-e-Izla</em>. It was <em>Necronomicon</em>, the forbidden text even Victor had shunned!</p><p>“Victor used the dead to bring about life,” I said, eyeing the hall where I knew Walton hid, in case intervention was necessary. “He would never hire people to murder fellow humans. That goes against everything he stood for.”</p><p>“Which is?”</p><p>“Preserving life!” I screamed. “You said we would help people, yet you have them killed with no remorse. If my brother is brought back, it will not be at the expense of others!”</p><p>“So you found it in your heart to forgive him?” Curwen taunted, placing his hands on his hips. “Stumbling over family ties was Victor’s mistake too. He could have been so much greater, had he only cast aside you deadweights and focused on the potential of what our research could accomplish!”</p><p>“You burned his letters,” my voice was barely a whisper. “And ours to him as well?”</p><p>“It benefited Victor to not obsess over your little lives,” Curwen spat dryly. “Reading of birthday parties and sappy laments wishing he was with you instead of studying the alchemists or perfecting his theories of galvanism!”</p><p>“Our mother had just died,” my voice trembled. “He was <em>seventeen</em>, Curwen. Victor needed family more than ever, and you took that from him. You made yourself all he had to cling to for companionship and bent his well-meaning aspirations into a twisted replica of your own!”</p><p>“Hardly,” Curwen snorted, running his finger around the rim of a nearby vase. “Despite your years of fabricated silence, he never forgot. Victor’s mind could have unraveled the eldritch secrets of the cosmos, yet he settled on perfecting <em>pathetic</em> humans and see how that ended for him?” Curwen’s voice faltered, and he shook his head. “Not me. I left the dull minds of Salem behind to ascend beyond the feeble species of man! I shall surpass both the gods of earth and the cosmos, and it will be done by raising up geniuses and yanking the secrets straight from their mouths, because dear Ernest, knowledge is power.”</p><p>I thought I knew insanity, but even Victors most manic fits paled in comparison to the man standing before me now. Something had changed in Curwen’s face. That reserved mask of cordial gentlemanliness had peeled away to reveal something very different beneath the surface. Something beyond reasoning with. Beyond the confines of reason itself.</p><p>“You are mad,” I breathed. <em>Walton, where are you?</em></p><p>“Victor said as much too, but he cannot lead an angry mob to run me out now!” Curwen’s laugh bounced off the scorched walls. “When I bring him back, Victor shall answer to <em>me</em> alone and his bleeding heart will obstruct his true capabilities no longer!”</p><p>“You will not make him a monster,” I shrieked and smashed my broom against a table of glass elixirs and spiraling instruments. Curwen made some strange noise as I flipped the table. Maybe I was weak compared to Victor, but I was still a Frankenstein. A human with enough fury to take a couple of syringes down with him. Curwen’s footsteps splashed through the puddles and I swung my broom his way. He smacked it to the floor and punched me with a force that slammed me against the wall. I grabbed a bottle from a nearby shelf and smashed it against his head. Curwen leaped back clutching the side of his face. I could see blood welling just above his right eye. His white teeth smiled in a perfect, horrible grin.</p><p>“Such determination! It is moments like this that you remind me of him the most! I truly respected Victor, and by extension tried tolerating you, but your refusal to cooperate leaves me to take drastic measures.”</p><p>I pushed myself off the wall, but my adrenaline was fading fast. The pulsing in my brain threatened to overwhelm me as I continued to glare Curwen’s way. A dark shape lurched upwards by the door. <em>Walton? Had he come at last?</em></p><p>My happy cry ended in an abrupt gurgle as the growing figure extended up to the dome-ceiling far above me. Its tentacles thumped carelessly against the rough stone despite the rows upon rows of bulging yellow eyes jerking in every direction imaginable. Neither my nightmares nor the chiseled image beneath Ingolstadt could compare to what floated above me now. It was wrong in every angle and proportion and hinted at cosmic realities that could drive a man mad. My limbs went numb in the presence of this creature who watched me from its place in the air. Curwen’s voice whispered nearby, though I barely heard it.</p><p>“Did you really think I could retrieve souls unaided? Bow to Yog-Sothoth, my dearest helping hand!” His voice grew soft. “Speaking of helping hands, your dearest brother’s corpse was missing one of his. The fool! Thinking he could escape me by not being a perfect specimen. He did not anticipate that I would run into his own blood, or more likely, that an invalid like you would even <em>try</em> to get anywhere near the work of great men like us!”</p><p>Somewhere there was a thud, a clack of steel slicing bone and the sensation of dripping wetness, yet it felt far away. What did petty injuries on a small earth to a smaller boy mean in the face of those watering yellow eyes? Eyes! Eyes without a face!</p><p>“Given your failure to bring me more blood, your own must do.”</p><p>Those were the last words I understood. After that, Curwen spoke in syllables foreign to the human tongue as I slipped to the realm beneath consciousness.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Oh noes, Curwen is actually a villian? Who saw that one coming?</p><p>(Feel free to comment with thoughts/suggestions, I'm always looking to improve!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Did I Solicit Thee from Darkness to Promote Me?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ernest finds himself trapped in the depths of Ingolstadt with Curwen's pit monsters, and finally comes to terms with his brother and the role he played in shaping Victor's tragic identity.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a time before pain had settled over my life like a thick fog. A time before Victor’s creature and Mama’s death, when I barely came up to Victor’s knees and spent my days charging though the woodland and whacking apart pond reeds that I pretended were incoming invaders. I had been prancing around the lakefront all morning when Mama kindly requested I stop chasing chickens and fetch Victor from the depths of our villa. I found him in the small stone room he always played in.</p><p>“Vic-tor, Mama says that Henry’ll arrive soon. She wants you and Elizabeth to be ready for him!”</p><p>Victor nodded absently from behind his table. He continued stirring the liquid inside one of several bowls.</p><p>“Do you not want to play?” My head tipped to the side.</p><p>“Of course I do,” Victor said, though his shoulder’s hunched. “But Henry and Elizabeth would rather recite poetry and paint the mountains. It is good fun, but shallow! Why not discover <em>why</em> paint changes color? Or heavens’ secrets only the mountains know?” Victor’s stirring lessened. “They do not understand. No one does.”</p><p>“Oh, I cannot stand poetry either!” I chimed. “That man Papa had speak the other night was a great snooze. I think your little bowls and vials are quite fine, though I cannot say I understand em’.”</p><p>Victor’s stirring spoon clattered to the ground. He looked at me for the first time. “Truly?”</p><p>“Uh-huh,” I said with a finger up my nose.</p><p>“You can be my assistant, then!” Victor’s hands clapped together and he shoved a wooden stepping stool beside the table so I could watch him. I scrambled up and he handed me a bronze spoon and a bowl of reddish liquid.</p><p>“Now, do not drink these chemicals, Ernest. This is dangerous alchemy!”</p><p>“What are we doing?” I breathed in excitement.</p><p>“Turning lead into gold,” Victor said in his best serious tone, though his smile broke through. “Mother would love it if we brought her a golden necklace made all by ourselves!”</p><p>“Yeah!” I chirped, and Victor’s smile widened.</p><p>“Like this, Ernest,” Victor said, churning the liquid in his own bowl. My attempt to replicate him sent the liquid splashing carelessly over the rim. Victor’s hands gently took hold of mine and guided my stirring until I had gotten the rhythm down.</p><p>“You are a natural,” Victor grinned. “It is nice having someone to play with.”</p><p>My cheeks flushed with heat, making me notice how cold the cellar was.</p><p>“It is chilly,” I remarked, glancing at the open window high above us. “Could you close that?”</p><p>“I am afraid not,” Victor explained. “These fumes are suffocating and will build up if they cannot escape.” Victor pointed to a badly rusted fire poker and a flaking steel bucket in the corner. “See how the lingering chemicals can devour the strongest material known to man? Fear not though, as long as we have sufficient air flow, no harm shall come to us.”</p><p>“You are brilliant,” my eyes widened.</p><p>Victor’s reply was cut off by Mama’s faint voice announcing Henry’s arrival. Victor immediately set down his spoon and began shutting the lids on his containers, whistling a little tune to himself. He gave me the honor of closing the last one while he strained upwards to shut the window.</p><p>“We must do this again, Ernest,” Victor said as I followed him into the hall. The rusted hinges creaked as he shut the door behind us. “Once the chemicals have the proper consistency, we may add lead and move onto the next step!” He paused and gave me a very serious look. “I must ask that you do not enter this place without me. Alchemy is a dangerous art if not handled properly.”</p><p>“Okay,” I nodded, charged with excitement at this secret project for Mama as we rushed up the stairs to the main room.</p><p>Victor met Elizabeth and Henry at the front door. Though I was too young to join them, Victor assured me that I would be old enough before I knew it! From the window, I watched the trio’s departure with a creeping loneliness. Chasing chickens did not appeal to me anymore. My legs carried me back down the twisting stairway to Victor’s little stone lab. Each bit I yanked the hefty door open the rusted hinges squeaked. Thankfully, I could squeeze inside with only a few inches of leeway. Yes, Victor had said I should not come here alone, but I was a natural at stirring, he had said so himself! How happy would Victor be to return and find himself ahead in his research! I popped the lids off the surrounding chemicals as I searched for the one I had been stirring before.</p><p>A chilly draft swept by me accompanied by a great bang. The door had shut. Hopping off the stepping stool, I bounded over to yank it open. The rusted knob disintegrated between my fingers, turning to dust from the continuous chemical exposure.</p><p>The surrounding fumes were thick in the air, and I rushed to open the window. My fingers strained upward, but even with the stool; I was too short. Too little. The peaceful blue of Switzerland’s sky rivaled my panic as I banged my fists against the wooden door. My voice grew hoarse as I screamed for Victor to save me. I screamed and screamed but no one came. No one ever came down here but Victor. I sunk to my knees by the door. The fumes were overpowering, pumping their poison into me as my shouts faded to whimpers.</p><p>I do not know how much time passed until the door swung open and inaudible cries reached me from where I had collapsed.</p><p>“He is here! Mother, he is down here,” Victor shouted, and I felt his arms carry me into the hallway. “Ernest, say something! Little brother? Talk to us!”</p><p>“Fetch a nurse,” Elizabeth whispered. My vision flickered between black nothingness and the vibrant colors of reality. The frantic screaming around me seemed to come from someplace far, far away.</p><p>My head bobbed as new hands tore me from Victor’s grasp. I recognized Mama’s voice as she cradled me.</p><p>“His face is blue! Oh Lord, Lord do something!”</p><p>“What happened here?” Papa’s voice came somewhere close to my ear.</p><p>The blurry shapes of Victor and his friends came into view. Victor was clutching his mouth, horror struck as Elizabeth stroked his shoulder. He stepped forward.</p><p>“Father, he was locked in my lab,” Victor croaked, nearly in tears. “The chemicals…”</p><p>“What have you done?” Mama’s shriek split the air. She was always so calm and nurturing to us, Victor adored her. But seeing me unresponsive seemed to momentarily tip her off the edge. “I told you to be careful with those chemicals! You would leave your little brother alone with your supplies? How could you be so irresponsible? You killed him! You killed your baby brother!”</p><p>Victor’s face had turned deathly white. “I, I...”</p><p>“Take him upstairs, he needs fresh air,” Papa ordered. Mama clutched me to her chest, as though her life could replenish mine. My head rolled over her shoulder as she rushed up the stairs. I watched the quickly fading figures left behind as Elizabeth touched Victor’s arm.</p><p>“She is in hysterics. She knows not what she says, Victor.”</p><p>But Victor was not listening. His horrified eyes were fixed on me with such an intensity that I could feel their gaze long after we had rounded the corner.</p><p>I never completely recovered from the incident. My coordination became sloppy and my constitution for academics nonexistent. Illness struck me easier too, and planned trips across Europe were canceled in favor of a more permanent lifestyle in Belrive. Being a child, I adapted well enough, but that look never left Victor’s eyes. It lingered with each unnecessary hour he spent trying to explain the schoolwork and dance theory everyone else had forgone teaching me, or every stone he threw at those laughing faces when I could not keep up. He stayed in his room for longer periods too. Only Elizabeth and Mama could draw him outside, so much did they mean to him.</p><p>Then Elizabeth sickened, and Mama died tending to her. Shortly after the funeral, he made arrangements to depart for Ingolstadt. I caught him just as he was stepping out the door with a suitcase of carelessly packed clothing poking out the sides. His shoulders shook when I called to him.</p><p>“Must you leave so soon, Victor?”</p><p>“What use am I here?” Victor muttered. “I failed to fix Mother, just as I failed to fix you.”</p><p>“It was never up to you what Mama’s fate would be,” I pleaded. I needed him to stay! How precious ‘stay’ was. “God decides these things.”</p><p>“The god spoken of in Geneva’s pulpits is benevolent and good!” Victor whirled on me. “Whatever governs this world is insensitive. Uncaring! No God of love would let Mother slip away, not when she was doing his good work by caring for others!” Victor shook his head. “What right have I to enjoyment while she rots in the ground and you are, are,” Victor turned away. “How can any of us claim happiness when we could sicken at any moment? All I hear is ticking, a countdown until everyone I have left follows her!” Victor’s voice dropped. “Modern medicine can cure disease, surely there exists a remedy for death? Some elixir for immortality as the ancient alchemists claimed? If so, I will not find it within these walls of tortured memories, but I will find it, Ernest.”</p><p>“Let me come with you, then,” I said, leaning forward on my cane. “I can help!”</p><p>“You must remain here where it is safe.”</p><p>“But—”</p><p>“No Ernest! You are <em>too weak</em>,” Victors’ eyes radiated hatred. Self-hatred. “Too weak, and it is all my fault!”</p><p>My Fault.</p><p>It had been forever since that day. I had tried to repress it. To forget. If I had never messed with Victor’s chemicals, if I had not crippled myself, Victor would not have that guilt and the urge to tamper with life and perfect it. Maybe I had not whispered to him to create that creature, but I had set him on the path to inevitable destruction, and when he had come to me, begging for help, I had called him mad and drove my own creation away to die alone.</p><p>The memory repeated over and over in the pits of that cosmic creature’s unearthly yellow eyes. Then the eyes blinked, and I awoke.</p><p>That overpowering, unnamable stench hit me first, then the chilled stone wet with slick moss beneath me. The intense cold told me I was far beneath the earth. Iron bars several feet above my head trapped me inside a dingy pit within the underground crypt. My left wrist throbbed where a hand had been, and I cradled the stump to my bloodied shirt. That multi-eyed creature Curwen had summoned flashed through my mind and I screamed. The ungodly barking I had heard down here before rose around me, much nearer than I preferred. Within the darkness of the pit, shapes shuffled around with slippery thumping.</p><p>“Walton?” I dared to call. “Walton, are you here?”</p><p>Slippery clopping struck up as a silhouette both not human and too human lunged at me on all fours. I scrambled up against the wall but there was nowhere to run. Something slimy brushed my leg and I lurched away as an equally appalling fiend reared up beside me with a demonic howl and slashed its paw-like appendage at the other creature. The latter backed away with a sour whine and shuffled further into the dark.</p><p>I stumbled away from the creature beside me and collapsed in the small beam of light on the floor. The creature fixed its eyes that were not eyes on me. I held my breath. It turned away and lowered itself to the floor, resting that head-like organ against its paws. Was <em>this</em> what Curwen meant by his attempts at resurrection being warped and inhuman? Walton would never stand a chance against those twisting nails. He was gone, and I would soon follow.</p><p>I reached inside my pocket and grasped air where Victor’s journal had been. My fist punched the floor as I howled. Curwen had all of Victor’s knowledge now, whether I had prevented him from resurrecting my brother or not. I had failed. Failed poor Walton, my brother, and possibly the world. How feeble Victor playing god felt compared to these cosmic abominations! A few feet away lay a trampled sheet of paper. I snatched up the relic of familiarity and saw the shredded edges where it had been torn from a book. The letters were written in Victor’s large, looping cursive:</p><p>
  <em>I beg of you Curwen, do not call up Any that you cannot put down; by which I mean, Any that can in turn call up something against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall command more than you.</em>
</p><p>I hardly processed the words, for beneath the faint light lay more pages from Victor’s journal. Curwen had not found it after all! With my single hand, I frantically grabbed the scattered remnants of my brother’s legacy. I would destroy them so no one could use Victor’s work to inflict further harm! The journal itself was on the edge of the light, badly chewed but still containing a few pages. Halfway through ripping the first one apart, my eyes settled on an entry:</p><p>
  <em>Wretched fool I am! I find myself subjected to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe. Curwen has taken me to the depths of Ingolstadt, those catacombs unused since the days of Weishaupt and his accursed New World order. He revealed his wicked work in full to me, which if left unchecked, shall jeopardize all civilization, all natural law and perhaps even the fate of the universe! I only wished to pour a torrent of light into our dark world, and for the sake of all life and Nature, I must thrust Curwen’s monstrous inclinations back into the dark. Forgive me, Mother, for delving into such unhallowed arts! Happier is the man who believes his native town the world than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.</em>
</p><p>Curwen claimed he had only recently removed the stonework and gained access to the crypt. He had also spoken of using mathematics to traverse the fourth dimension and vanish from his prison cell. If he could disappear from enclosed spaces, surely materializing in others would be no issue for him. My hand trembled as I read further.</p><p>
  <em>Curwen threatens to reveal my grave robbing if I expose his wicked deeds, yet my life and reputation are the very least of things that hang in the balance. M. Krempe and his ever-present disdain for the alchemists laughed off my warning, though it struck the soul of kind M. Waldman. He has offered his assistance.</em>
</p><p>The next page was barely legible, and I had to speak the words out loud to understand them at all.</p><p>
  <em>It is done. We have set everything in that blasted lab ablaze, God willing Curwen too, though they have yet to locate his remains. The contents found within that lab have left me much changed. I am oppressed by a slow fever and in my agitation even the fall of a leaf startles me. Many have grown alarmed at the wreck I have become, but I might not be mad if Curwen’s accursed tomb-legions had not been so heinous!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If men like Curwen, bent on death and destruction, exist in this world, then my research may be our only defense against such insanity! I must discover the spark of life and use that power to protect the few that remain to me. My work, grizzly as it is, is nothing like Curwens! I shall create a man, not some cosmic daemon, and he will be benevolent and good! Surpassing any mortal man and immoral fiend fixated on tearing the world apart! </em>
</p><p>The next entry was a nearly identical description of that infamous creature found within Walton’s biography on Victor. The lustrous black hair, white teeth and overall beauty of his creation. Victor’s excitement showed through the sloppy handwriting in a way Walton’s printed report never could. Mankind’s salvation. With the key to life in his reach, he would never lose another person he loved again.</p><p>I skimmed the mechanisms used to infuse life into the creature, why linger on the process when I knew the result? To my surprise, the narration differed from Walton’s account when Victor recounted the creature’s watery yellow eyes- the very detail that had sent him fleeing in disgust and sealed the fate of us all:</p><p>
  <em>What horror! Curwen’s influence lingers closer than a familiar. It stains my hands to make my good work an abomination! Those eyes are watery, pulsing with yellow. It is not the candlelight playing tricks, it cannot be! I hoped to perfect man, but I have only raised up one of Curwen’s horrors in the body of my fellow creatures! There is no soul inside those yellow eyes, there cannot be! Oh, it is the same! The same! I chant the incantation to disperse the monster, but it is not enough! I shall inscribe them here and recite again, surely there is more power in the written word?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“OGTHROD AI’F<br/>
GEB’L—EE’H<br/>
YOG-SOTHOTH<br/>
‘NGAH’NG AI’Y<br/>
ZHRO!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It has not vanished! I dreamt of Mother’s corpse rotting in my arms. Oh, I have called up something greater which I cannot put down! I have brought a curse upon my head that cannot be cured. Yet who can I tell? M. Waldman would never forgive me if he knew I continued this wicked research and the rest would call me mad. Both would lock me up, and then who could save humanity from the vengeance of this daemon? I must stay silent and find a way to undo this. I must. I must!</em>
</p><p>The rest was illegible from ink smeared in a manic fit of agitation. There were no pages after it. I shut the journal, thinking of that accursed mass of tentacles and twitching yellow eyes.</p><p>Tears blurred my vision. I could see the horror on Victor’s face that dreary November night as he mistook his innocent creation for one of Curwen’s awful fiends. If I really wanted to, I could also see the shreds of paper caught in the monster’s claws squatting before me. My eyes closed involuntarily at the wretch. It was like a human, but painfully unfinished. The deficiencies were uncanny, and the abnormalities of proportion hinted at obscure cosmic relationships to horrible to behold. Yet I thought of Victor’s creature, the monster who had murdered my family out of spite because of his neglect. His appearance had denied him companionship and turned his heart black. Forcing my eyes open, I beheld the thing before me. Misshapen though it was, there were glimpses of familiarity. The shape of those uneven shoulders, the outline of what had once been a jaw. The blue tint in the eyes that were not eyes.</p><p>“You wanted me to read these pages, did you not, Victor?”</p><p>The creature released a moan outside the range of human vocal cords. He had slashed at the previous monster to defend me. He was safe. I crept over and touched his jutting shoulder blade. The skin felt like wet leaves mixed with gravel.</p><p>“I understand why you did it. I should have believed you before,” I whimpered. “Even if I doubted your claims, I should have taken your fear seriously.”</p><p>That which was not Victor sighed.</p><p>“I have never been capable of seeing what is right in front of me. Curwen is right, I <em>am</em> a feeble mind, the background character to the grand narratives of you greater men.”</p><p>The creature whined and rested his disfigured paw on my hand. I tried to ignore the wetness of the skin. He shook his head with a soft croak. My eyes looked into his. Past the cosmic abnormalities, I sought my brother. I found deep pain, regret, and words unspoken that would never be. I forced myself to smile.</p><p>“At least we are together in the end.”</p><p>The creature reared back with a hiss. A claw jammed beside my knee and etched C-U-R-W-E-N into the moss before slashing the word with a vicious intensity.</p><p>“Yes, yes, I hate him too,” I sighed.</p><p>The creature growled and gave me the begging look our old dog had perfected at the dinner table. Again, he slashed the remnants of Curwen’s name.</p><p>“You wish to stop him?”</p><p>The creature yipped excitedly and pointed to my chest.</p><p>“<em>Me?</em>” I broke off in a cough. “Victor, you are the genius! I led him straight to your remains and started this mess!”</p><p>The creature grabbed one of the torn pages and shoved the paper into my hand. I reread the familiar lines:</p><p>
  <em>I beg of you Curwen, do not call up Any that you cannot put down; by which I mean, Any that can in turn call up something against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall command more than you.</em>
</p><p>“Victor, this makes no sense.”</p><p>The claw scribbled a new name- <em>Marie Antoinette,</em> into the moss.</p><p>“The ex-queen of France? She was executed years ago!” I paused. “By her own people. Commoners. Lesser men.” I traced the name in the moss with an idle finger. Victor’s intent was reaching me. “Some people are born for greatness, and some are not. I am inferior to you two, an insignificant ant. Yet how great is a queen, be it of ants or men, without their subjects? It is the expendables who enable great men to be great, and can tear them down just as easily. Maybe I cannot stop Curwen, but together we may yet win!”</p><p>Victor nodded and half-hopped, half crawled to the stone wall and stood on what I assumed were his hind legs. He angled his head to the grate several feet above us. Picking up on the gesture, I climbed onto his shoulders with great difficultly. Leaning my stump of a hand against the rough wall, I stood on Victor’s shoulders and strained up toward the grate. Yipping came from below me as the other creatures emerged to investigate. Growls and barks echoed off the walls as they fought one another with animalistic savagery. My fingers grasped the grate and lifted it easily. Curwen had clearly planned on me being dinner to his failed experiments instead of working with them to escape.</p><p>Victor boosted me upward and I scrambled from the pit onto the stone floor. I was in one of the corridors connected to the haunted room of chiseled stone Curwen had shown me before. I had to wonder what pentagrams were original to Weishaupt’ s Illuminati, and what grizzly additions Curwen had added himself? I snatched up a dusty pole and stuck the end into the pit where Victor growled at the circle of monsters closing in on him. I regretted the second look, for horrid as Victor’s appearance was, his fellow creatures boasted far greater abnormalities.</p><p><em>Curwen is improving</em>, I thought with a shudder as Victor clutched the flimsy pole and scrambled up the wall as the others snapped at his heels. He collapsed beside me in a panting heap as those left behind howled and scratched at the walls. It seemed Curwen had not perfected bringing back the minds of his genius men either, and I pressed against Victor’s flank with a shudder as he stared into the pit. Despite his deformities, the drawn eyebrows and puzzled scowl were distinctly Victors, and I thanked whatever governed the laws Curwen rivaled that I had my brother’s mind in full. Victor’s yip interrupted my thoughts as he angled his head toward the pit.</p><p>“You want to free them too?” I asked, the only explanation. “Victor, they tried to eat me and I am sure they devoured Walton!”</p><p>Victor pawed at the pit impatiently, and I knew arguing was pointless. Then again, if these creatures were Curwen’s failed attempts at resurrecting the dead, surely they retained <em>some</em> form of humanity? Victor nudged me behind him as he lowered the pole into the pit and the remaining creatures pulled themselves up one by one, ten in total. Each one thanked us by lunging at me with snapping jaws, but Victor was more complete than they, and a few swats sent them rushing down the nearest corridor howling with demonic bloodlust. The sound of shattering pottery reached me as they wrecked Curwen’s little stock in the furnace room. As the final one disappeared down the dark hallway, I could only hope Victor knew what he was doing. Victor pointed a claw to the opposite doorway. Nodding, I snatched up the pole and rushed with him back into the light.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>(Feel free to comment with thoughts/suggestions, I'm always looking to improve!)<br/>Boy, do I love retellings where the new POV character helped shape characters from the original work! I wanted to do something similar with Ernest shaping Victor’s desire to perfect life, and his preestablished illness coupled with Victor’s childhood fascination with alchemy was a recipe for heart wrenching disaster! In a perfect world, Ernest would have told us that flashback upfront…looks like the ‘unreliable narrator’ taint runs in the family. </p><p>Also, I want to bring attention to the wonderful H. P. Lovecraft, the man who spent an entire paragraph describing how indescribable his pit creatures were…thanks buddy, that gives me soooo much to work with.</p><p>Annnnnd lastly, fun fact: for Victor’s letters I merged several sentences from Frankenstein and Dexter Ward to give them a more authentic feel. There’s just something about combining Frankenstein’s “I only wished to pour a torrent of light into our dark world,” and Dexter Ward’s “for the sake of all life and Nature, I must thrust Curwen’s monstrous inclinations back into the dark” that just WORKS. Also, when Victor mentions the fall of the leaf startling him I tossed in Herbert West: Reanimator’s closing line (with a few changes) as well!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. The Importance of Being Ernest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ernest, Victor and Walton attempt to stop Curwen's unhallowed sorcery and his freed pit monsters from wrecking havoc on not just Ingolstadt, but the world!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The creatures’ furious howling accompanied by shattering glass echoed ahead of us as Victor and I ascended the dark stairway. Victor had slowed so I could keep up, but even with the pole doubling as a cane for support, I still found myself falling behind him as we followed the sounds to Curwen’s lab. Inside the room of scorched stone, the creatures were ransacking everything they could reach, from scoring their claws across cryptic inscriptions to hooves smashing large bowls and scattering salt from broken vases. Victor growled and reached for Curwen’s tattered copy of the <em>Necronomicon, </em>but I yanked his paw back. He blinked at me in surprise.</p><p>“They will demolish Curwen’s lab permanently, Victor, but that means little if the man himself walks free,” I explained.</p><p>Victor bared his teeth with a determined nod, and we hurried down the stone hallway. Human voices came from an adjoining corridor up ahead. My initial joy at hearing the approach of my fellow species faltered as I recognized the concentrated rage within their cries. Shouts of my prison escape and finding my horse near the same university where Victor had done his wicked work filled the hall. Victor backed behind me with a whine, but they had already turned into view. The roars of vengeance fell silent.</p><p>“<em>Guten Tag</em>,” I greeted them with a little wave. Victor covered his face and turned away with a whimper. “I understand how this may appear, but Curwen—”</p><p>“Monster,” Button Boy croaked. The groups hardened stares melted like wax to reveal the most primal form of human fear beneath.</p><p>“You are wrong,” I stammered, trying to turn Victor around to face them. “He is no enemy, but Curwen is—”</p><p>“Monster!” Button Boy wailed, pointing a trembling finger. The gravity of my situation deprived me of enjoying my adversary’s despair.</p><p>I began to explain, but rationalization failed as raw instinct sent the entire caravan scrambling back from where they had come, wailing warnings of hellspawn and demons.</p><p>“They will return, we must hurry!” I breathed. Victor remained silent, his paws still clutching that half-formed crater of a face. How the tables had turned for him! I touched his shoulder.</p><p>“Do not listen to them, they call me a monster too.”</p><p>He whimpered a little.</p><p>“Victor, we must hurry. We need to find Curwen before he does this to anyone else.”</p><p>A familiar scream echoed further down the hall.</p><p>
  <em> “You will never get anything from me!” </em>
</p><p>I coughed in disbelief. <em>Walton?</em></p><p>Victor’s head perked up as the captain shouted an onslaught of sailor curses. Flexing his paws, Victor started forward with newfound determination. The brief rest rejuvenated me as well and we followed the screams to another door. We crouched out of sight, and Victor’s claw pushed it open. I saw Curwen feverishly pacing across an old lecture room, now crowded with twisting instruments of varying sizes and shapes I recognized as medieval torture devices.</p><p>Suspended in the center of it all was Walton with his hands tied above his head shaking enough to make the entire rope tremble. I stifled my happy cry, he was alive! My joy wilted as Curwen yanked Walton’s chin up to his wild eyes.</p><p>“Failure bars me at every turn. Victor must have shared more than what you published—<em>tell me!</em>”</p><p>“Not a word,” Walton spat. “He took it to the grave—where you should have left him!”</p><p>“Your bravery may have served you well on the ice, but here in <em>my world,</em> it is a liability.” Curwen said in his hollow tone. He twirled a knife dangerously close to the captain’s throat. “I <em>will</em> get answers from you. What that takes is entirely in your hands, which, if you have not noticed, are tied at present.”</p><p>“You leave him alone!” I shouted, jumping into view.</p><p>Curwen turned to where I stood in the doorway. I could see the raw cut I had left above his right eye, it would leave a nasty scar.</p><p>“You? You are dead!”</p><p>“I came back. Runs in the family.”</p><p>“Ernest, you must flee,” Walton shouted. “Tell the townsfolk, get help! If Curwen’s work is not thwarted, we will all perish!”</p><p>The smell of smoke from the hall graced me, thick and smoldering. <em>The town is way ahead of you, Walton. </em></p><p>“Curwen’s work is at an end. His lab and underground stock are destroyed,” I smiled as Curwen’s eye’s widened. “Your creations are not so enthusiastic regarding your plans.”</p><p>Curwen remained poised, though I could see the tightness in his jaw.</p><p>“Do not take that tone with me, boy! Never mind the lab, I can rebuild. Victor was the closest I have come to raising the dead yet! My legacy has only just begun, but dearest Ernest, I can promise that you shall <em>never</em> leave these walls.” He pressed the knife to Walton’s neck. “Now call off those fiends.”</p><p>Glass shattered above us as a flaming torch broke through the window and clattered against a table crowded with Curwen’s chemicals. The furniture went up in a glorious ball of fire.</p><p>“You are in no place to make to make demands, Curwen,” I said steadily, though the smoke tightened my lungs. Curwen saw my weakness.</p><p>“But a feeble invalid is?”</p><p>“That depends on you. I am not the one with any use for this.” I walked toward the flaming table and held out the journal, letting the pole fall against my side. Curwen’s ever-proper frame stiffened.</p><p>“Victor’s journal?”</p><p>“This old thing?” I chuckled, lowering the book dangerously close to the flames. “These diagrams are far too advanced for a feeble invalid such as myself. It would make fine kindling, though!”</p><p>“Fool!” Curwen’s voice boomed around the room with monstrous ferocity. “You know not what you do. Burn those notes, and mankind will lose the ability to cure death forever!” His face loosened into a kind smile as the knife left Walton’s throat. “Maybe my ideals do not align with yours, but consider the benefits if this research were delivered into worthier hands? Would you damn humanity based on one bad egg?” His neck snapped to the side with a wicked sneer. “Do you admit your brother’s research was immoral? That he set out to create monsters as they claimed at the tavern? On the docks?”</p><p>My fingers tightened around the book as I fought for breath. “He would have LOVED his creature, had you not mixed his notions of life with such unbridled evil!”</p><p>“Oh, so you are buddies now?” Curwen cackled. “Have me take all the blame and forgive him for his bad parenting!”</p><p>“I cannot forgive him, but I understand his reasoning. I could never hate my own brother. Do you agree, Victor?”</p><p>Slippery shuffling came behind me as Victor crawled into view. I watched his shadow overlap mine as he stood on his hind legs. Walton screamed and struggled with newfound terror. Curwen’s face turned the color of clean bone.</p><p>“<em>Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall command more than you,</em>” I quoted, and Curwen stepped back. “You thought I was easy prey, but you made a mistake picking on a nothing like me.”</p><p>Curwen wiped sweat from his brow. “You misinterpreted the entire point of that warning—as though the grand scale I work on would encompass the likes of you!”</p><p>“Interpretation is a funny thing,” I said. Curwen’s taunts would shackle me no longer.</p><p>Curwen did not respond. His eyes were all for my brother.</p><p>“Do not do this, Victor,” he croaked. “I can return you in full yet. Consider the possibilities! We can still—”</p><p>Victor leaped over my head toward Curwen with a howling scream. Curwen grabbed a nearby vase and smashed it on the floor. Salt scattered around as greenish-black smoke hid him from view. I spotted Curwen edging toward the backdoor and shouted as much to Victor. Curwen pointed to the salt and began speaking in an unfamiliar language as the salt trembled around me.</p><p>
  <em> “Y’AI ’NG’NGAH, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> YOG-SOTHOTH, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> H’EE—L’GEB-” </em>
</p><p>Several vibrating grains combined beside my shoe and popped like a kernel of corn into a glazed eyeball. Similar piles of merging salt began morphing into various bits of flesh that in turn lumped together to form larger pieces.</p><p>“Victor, he means to summon up creatures against us!” I cried.</p><p>Victor burst through the smoke and slashed at Curwen. Curwen’s incantation ended in a splutter of pain as claws scored across his arm. The half-built body of Curwen’s abomination slumped lifelessly on the floor. At the edge of my vision, flat tentacles slipped away.</p><p>Curwen pulled a vial from his satchel and smashed it against Victor’s head. Victor howled and pawed violently at his eyes as Curwen rushed to the backdoor. I started forward, but he was too far ahead. Curwen paused at the threshold to laugh.</p><p>“Mistakes were made here, but failure breeds success. You think yourself so great? I command a darkness your puny mind could never comprehend! My work is far from over, and so is yours. Those fiends you have released even I cannot control! When they are done wrecking the place of their birth, they will charge into the city and spill the precious lifeblood of every man, woman and child in sight!”</p><p>The blood I had been transporting was <em>food</em> for the creatures? My last shipment had been confiscated, they had to be starving! Curwen smiled as he shut the door.</p><p>“They are your responsibility now, Ernest.”</p><p>Victor stopped pawing at his head. He glanced at the door, then me.</p><p>The townsfolk cheered somewhere nearby. Smoke drifted in from the hallway to merge with the spiraling cloud from the blazing table. Curwen’s brainless creatures surely had the sense to flee fire! I bit my lip, if the two groups met, it would be a massacre.</p><p>“Victor, in your journal you wrote of attempting to disperse your creation, correct?” I flipped to the corresponding page and the quote Victor’s shaky hand had scribbled down. “If I read this, would it turn them back to salt?”</p><p>Victor nodded and reached for the journal.</p><p>“No, it has to be me. You cannot speak, remember?”</p><p>The paw lowered. Victor released a little whimper and tapped my shoulder in concern.</p><p>“I can do it. You must stop Curwen!”</p><p>Victor stared back.</p><p>“When we were children, you always told me I could be great if I only applied myself,” I said quietly. “You saw something in me when everyone else only noticed weakness. Let me prove you right, Victor. Let me disperse them!”</p><p>“With all due respect, Ernest, I am burning here!” Walton pleaded, still suspended central to an encroaching wall of flame.</p><p>Victor dashed over and snapped the rope between his paw while the other gently lowered Walton to the ground. Walton trembled at the towering creature, though to his credit he did not turn away. The flames were growing around us, it would not be long before both Curwen’s exit and the hall were inaccessible. Victor glanced to me, and I smiled. His head dipped, and he rushed over to pry the backdoor off its hinges before following Curwen.</p><p>“You must explain all of this to me later, Ernest,” Walton huffed, rubbing his rope burned wrists.</p><p>“Walton, you need to get the townsfolk away from here,” I urged. “They will listen to an upstanding citizen such as yourself. If I fail to disperse those creatures, they will devour everyone!”</p><p>“You sound like a general,” Walton laughed, and I wondered how much more of this madness the withered captain could take. “Despite your slouching, I can see that same determination Victor had when I met him on the ice. It is a power than makes universal law crumble. I shall assist you however I can, Ernest.”</p><p>“You are a good man,” I said, and I meant it. “I apologize for lashing out at you before.”</p><p>“Ernest, you must not—”</p><p>“All I ask, Walton, is for you to write my biography more tastefully than Victors. Just get to the point instead of throwing in such pretentious Romantic prose.”</p><p>Walton shook my single hand. “If that is your request, you must stay alive to make me.”</p><p>“I will try.”</p><p>Walton nodded and we rushed into the hall. As he followed the cheering, I went the opposite direction, toward Curwen’s lab and his creatures. Each step I took was purposeful. Victor would stop Curwen, Walton would evacuate the townsfolk, and I would disperse the monsters. None of us were greater than the other, we were each equal in necessity. If I played my part, all would be well.</p><p>I found all ten creatures mindlessly pummeling the steel and concrete remains of Curwen’s instruments, to fixated on smashing dust to notice my approach. I opened the journal with my trembling hand, watching the fiends’ destruction.</p><p>
  <em> “OGTHROD AI’F, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> GEB’L—EE’H.” </em>
</p><p>I dared to glance up and saw the creatures had paused. They could have overpowered me easily, but instead, something like peace settled in their eyes as I continued.</p><p>
  <em> “YOG-SOTHOTH, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> ‘NGAH’NG.” </em>
</p><p>A transformation began before my eyes, so terrible I focused solely on repeating the final words.</p><p>
  <em> “AI’Y, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> ZHRO!” </em>
</p><p>Silence greeted the closing lines. I glanced upwards, but nothing remained of Curwen’s creations, except a thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust scattered on the floor.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Did I mention this was really fun to write? Because man, this was fun to write!<br/>Also, when Ernest thinks Curwen’s creatures are starving I know that they can last centuries without eating, as described in Dexter Ward, but Ernest himself wouldn’t know that.</p><p>(Feel free to comment with thoughts/suggestions, I'm always looking to improve!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Ask of the Lesser (final chapter)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The conclusion to it all! Sorry pal, you'll have to read this one yourself</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The fire had spread to engulf the surrounding buildings as I stumbled down the green to the gates of Ingolstadt University. Walton was waiting for me, his face unreadable.</p><p>“Did you succeed, Ernest?”</p><p>“Yes. It was surprisingly easier than I anticipated. I think the creatures were human enough to recognize their situation, whatever Curwen bestowed on them you cannot call life.”</p><p>Walton sighed with relief. “May they rest in peace, the poor souls! On my end, it took a bit of convincing, but Curwen’s <em>Wanted</em> name coupled with my documentation of your brother won the townsfolk over. They retreated to protect their homes. Napoleon’s war has taken enough from them to risk losing any more.”</p><p>“That leaves Victor,” I said.</p><p>“Here he comes,” Walton angled his head at Victor’s shape hobbling down the green toward us.</p><p>“Something is wrong,” I choked, watching each pained step. “Victor!”</p><p>I rushed over just as Victor collapsed on his side. The half-formed ribcage heaved next to chemical burns stretching across large portions of his body.</p><p>“Oh God, hang on, Victor!” I gasped, “I will help you. Walton, what do you do for these burns?”</p><p>Victor yipped weakly, shaking his head. Though his eyes were not human, I recognized that distinct look of self-hating failure I had seen in the aftermath of my incident and Mama’s death.</p><p>“You failed,” I breathed as ember’s fell onto the grass around us. “Curwen escaped?”</p><p>Victor moaned from his place on the grass. I fought against the intense throbbing in my skull. Curwen was still out there, free to pursue his wicked work on an even grander scale! Maybe we had set him back, but a man of Curwen’s wealth would have no trouble replacing his instruments.</p><p>“You had one job, Victor,” Walton sighed.</p><p>“He is wounded, Walton, find some cloth! We must staunch this bleeding.” My hand wiped blackish liquid off a patch of Victor’s half-formed scales. “Rest Victor, and then we will pursue Curwen together!”</p><p>“Ernest,” Walton knelt beside me. “You know that cannot happen.”</p><p>“Nonsense!”</p><p>“His looks would turn even the bravest man insane, and that stench would never pass in the society of men,” Walton paused. “His spirit may be here, but he belongs to the dead, Ernest. You said so yourself, you cannot call his present condition life. It is a mockery of that!”</p><p>I turned to the wounded creature slumped before me. The eyes had that same sadden look of acceptance I had seen in the others.</p><p>“But I just got you back,” I whimpered, pleading with the truth. “Your appearance is not terribly abhorrent, and I can handle the smell! We can hide out in the woodlands. We can still be a family, Victor! You do not have to leave again.”</p><p>Victor shook his head, and with a shaking claw etched C-U-R-W-E-N into the dirt before slashing it with his quickly draining strength.</p><p>“We must stop him, Ernest,” Walton said for them both.</p><p>I closed my eyes. So this was the end? My sunlit fantasy of my family and I living together was never to be. They would stay dead, while I was left alone. Even if he was just a remnant, I could not lose Victor!</p>
<ol>
I. Me. Such selfish pronouns! I knew Victor was suffering in his detestable state, and I had learned from the best to not tamper with life to suit my own desires. I would have to let him go.
</ol><p>“Ok,” I whispered to the wind. My arms embraced Victor’s cold, sticky flesh. “I will free you from his horrible condition, then thwart Curwen’s plans once and for all! I promise you that, Victor.”</p><p>Victor’s claws timidly cupped over my stump-of-a-wrist.</p><p>“This injury is nothing,” I patted his paw. “I shall say I lost my hand in the war, fighting like a true soldier!”</p><p>“Your brother will be well cared for,” Walton smiled sadly. “You saved my life on the ice, Victor. Preserving your brothers is the least I can do.”</p><p>Victor glanced back to me.</p><p>“I will get by,” My hand left his to wipe my eyes. “Maybe the name Frankenstein will always be linked to you, but that is fine. I have never wished for fame or glory, but <em>purpose</em>. A reason for a puny ant like me to exist in this vast world, and thanks to you, I now have perhaps the most important mission of all. A mission I know I am more than capable of completing! You can rest in peace.”</p><p>Victor’s paws flexed. A sad smile spread across his face as he settled more comfortably in the grass. His eyes closed, waiting patiently. Looking at his battered frame, I knew I had made the right choice, for him.</p><p>My voice cracked as I read those infamous lines for dispersal—a farewell to both Victor and the flaming wreckage of the university that had smoldered him so long ago. Then it was over, and a gust of wind blew his ashes away. My knees hit the grass, and I watched the distant flames for a long, long time.</p><p>“Ernest, you did right by your brother,” Walton at last broke the silence.</p><p>“Do you still have your ship, Walton?” I asked dully.</p><p>Walton blinked, surprised by this question. “Yes, it waits on the docks.”</p><p>“Curwen’s escapades will make any progress for him in Europe near impossible,” I said slowly. “I doubt such negative rapport will reach across the ocean to his native America.”</p><p>“Not unless we let it,” Walton smiled. “Shall we set sail?”</p><p>“We have not a moment to lose,” I got to my feet. Purpose was filling me, urging me forward with a strength I had not felt before. Perhaps Button Boy was not so wrong about the family taint, maybe the madness that had fueled Victor lingered within me too? I welcomed the unrelenting determination and fearlessness to overcome the impossible, I would need every bit of it to bring down Curwen.</p><p>“Hopefully New England boasts a calmer climate than the chaos of Napoleon’s war,” I said. “I noticed it has weighed heavily on you.”</p><p>Walton chuckled nervously, stroking his matted beard. “I have seen greater evils than the squabbles of man. Curwen’s monstrosities were not my first encounter with such cosmic abominations. After I returned from my failed Arctic exploration, thanks to Victor’s persuading, I regrouped and set out again with much greater caution and experience,” Walton frowned. “A foolish plan, I succeeded.”</p><p>So Walton’s shriveled state was not a result of the war?</p><p>“You really made it to Antarctica?” I asked. “I must admit that I heard no mention of it.”</p><p>“It is better left unspoken,” Walton shuttered. “I dare not speak of those Mountains of Madness.”</p><p>The unnamable smell that had hung over Ingolstadt since my arrival was fading from the green. Together, Walton and I left the gates behind for the docks.</p><p>“Try me,” I said with a smile. “I know a thing or two of madness.”</p><p> </p><p>/END</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Now yes, I know Walton was exploring the North Pole rather than Antarctica, but really, how could I NOT make that change at the end? They’re both icy expanses of nothing, and those closing lines are gold!</p><p>The main reason I wrote this was to explore Ernest’s minor character status alongside Lovecraftian themes on the insignificance of man, (as well as providing desperately needed POSITIVE interpretations of Victor Frankenstein, because while he certainly isn't a hero, he's not an eViL mAd DoCtOr like so many adaptations portray him, pretentiously worded or not, the poor guy really loved his family!). Let me know how I did, I’m always up for critique/suggestions! ^^</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me know your comments/thoughts!</p><p>Of all the characters in Frankenstein, few have been slighted more than Ernest. He switches from sickly invalid farmer in the 1818 version to aspiring soldier in 1831, but despite losing just as much as Victor, he gets brushed to the sidelines by the end. The aftermath of the insignificant sole survivor of the Frankenstein house is just too good to not explore, and what better encapsulates the insignificance of us lonely humans more than the works of H. P. Lovecraft? Or amplifies it better than the disastrous French Revolution sweeping across Europe around the same time the events of Frankenstein take place? Considering Joseph Curwen spent nine years abroad studying dark arts, including necromancy and graverobbing, it didn’t seem like much of a stretch to write this crossover.</p><p>Scholars typically place the events of Frankenstein’s in the 1790s, so for this adaptation, I have Victor dying in 1798 and Ernest fleeing soon after when the peasant riots in Geneva were escalating. Since Curwen was stated to be killed in 1771, I have bumped up the events of Dexter Ward to overlap with the timeline of Frankenstein. This crossover serves as a prequel to Dexter Ward and sequel to Frankenstein, taking place in 1801 after Ingolstadt closed in the real world amidst financial troubles as well as near the end of Curwen’s nine years abroad.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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